october 17th, 2023. regular meeting of the municipal transportation agency board of directors and parking authority commission. good afternoon directors. staff and members of the public. we thank you for joining us. this meeting is being held in hybrid format, occurring in person at city hall room 400 broadcast live on sf tv and by phone. the phone number to use is (415)!a655-0001. acces code 26628586819. when the item is called dial star three to enter the queue, commenters will have up to two minutes to provide comment unless otherwise noted by the chair. please speak clearly and sure you're in a quiet location and turn off any tvs or computers around you. please note that a time limit of ten minutes of remote public comment on each action or discussion item has been set in notice for this meeting. we thank you for your cooperation. places you on item number two. roll call director hemminger here hemminger present director henderson in henderson. present

director hinsey. present hinsey present. director. so here. so present. director uchitelle here you present director. kahina here. kahina present chair. chehregan here. eken present. for the record, i note that director hinsey is attending the meeting remotely. director hinsey is reminded that she must appear on camera throughout the meeting, and in order to speak or vote on any items places you on. item number three, the ringing and use of cell phones and similar sound producing electronic devices are prohibited at this meeting. the chair may order the removal from the meeting room of any person responsible for the ringing or use of a cell phone or other similar sound producing electronic device. this places you on item four approval of minutes for the october 3rd regular meeting. thank you directors with any changes to the october 3rd meeting minutes hearing none open public comment for those in the room on item 4th october third meeting minutes and seeing none, please go to remote at this time we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial

star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. no speakers. okay. close public comment. is there a motion motion to approve the minutes? second. second please call the roll on the motion to approve the minutes. director hemminger a hemminger. director henderson. henderson and director. hinsey hi director. so i. so director uchitel uchitel i director kahina. i. i kahina chehregan. i ekin. i thank you. the minutes are approved. places you are on item number five communications. i have none. moving on to item number six introduction of new or unfinished business by board members. okay colleagues, are there items of new and unfinished business? i see you, director uchitel. i'd like to open with one new and unfinished item, which is i had asked previously our new directors director so and director henderson to share a few reflections on their priorities coming into the meeting, into the board and i know you had a

chance to share priorities with the staff at a town hall, and i wondered if we could just turn the mic to you all to share a couple reflections on your priorities for your service. thank you. chair. good afternoon, everyone. good afternoon. welcome back. many and i my priorities are pretty consistent. i think everyone had already hear it many, many times. and but i am really appreciative of putting it on this form. um, because it's become an agenda item and then we are going to set some of these items interactions in our next year. so my first foremost priority is public safety, but that's a really broad item. so i wanted to distill down to a few things that i think it could be in immediately actionable. so,

so it's a safe ridership on public transportation is what i really want to focus. and precisely it touches along vision zero. that is something that we all really wanted to get better at and we are working to get better at this and i wanted to see that we have this thing. imagine every parents feel confident and safe to let their own children to ride muni to schools and after school programs just as simple as that. i understand that this is not something that in our own agency we can single handedly to achieve that because there is so much it takes to how to get these kids to be on the street and get to the stop and safely wait for our muni and then get on and get off. so i would like to continue to work and foster more, relate with our police

department and some other community. his group to help us to achieve this priorities that i want to have because that's a very important thing. everyone has kids and everyone's friends has kids. not everyone, but we all understand. we all are kids once. so that is my priority number one. and my second priority is reaching out to more culturally appropriate community outreach, focusing on people look like me and people look like like they are a minority in this city. so racial equity and belonging is something that i hold really dear to and i carry it on from my previous experience in the arts commission and then in the planning department in this commission called historic preservation commission. and so i would love to continue you to

see we i think our agency had a really robust program. so i would love to continue to elevate us to continue to adapt and be very, very culturally, appropriately reaching out to our different communities and especially in our community stations. so the third one is my priority is focusing on how can we find more money, more funding and i because this is this is really important, you know, at the end of the day, we need that gas. we need that juice to run. and precisely i see this as not just a local issue, as a regional issue. so we have to really think really outside of the box. and i would love to have a lot of creative thinking of people here and also whoever else is listening to. i'm like

really tapping into my friend us who have done amazing things themselves and just to see what can we do locally and also regional in the state level and federal level, because i think that this will really help us and to solve one piece of the puzzle or to better position our agency to be competitively to hire staff with a purposeful skill sets that are ready to face our current and future challenges. that's it. that's all i have to say. thank you so much, director. so it's really helpful to hear your priorities. director henderson good afternoon, everyone, and thank you, chair, for allowing me the opportunity to share with you all a little bit about the priorities that i see. i pretty much am in alignment with with what director soul offered. i think that safety is really important. safety on our systems, but also safe neighborhoods. i am a hauser by

profession and so part of my every day job is to make sure that i'm creating communities that people want to live in, feel safe in. and part of that, i think, is our ability through this agency to really connect neighborhoods, make certain parts of san francisco so that oftentimes are under the radar or or a little bit on the edges of the map. make them accessible. you know, the hills don't make the city super easy to traverse. so i think that we really do have an opportunity to ensure that folks, whether they live in the center of the city or on the periphery, are able to access shops, health care, to have stable housing and stable neighborhoods and really are able to enjoy their neighborhood and parts of the city that they may not necessarily be visit

often, but it doesn't take forever to get there. and i hope that i hope that we are able to focus while i'm here on on really creating neighbor hoods that families, that individuals that people can enjoy and feel safe in, safe walking down the streets, wide sidewalks. i think it's so, so important to create a sense of place and so i look forward to learning more, but also contributing to creating that throughout the city and especially in areas where where they historically have have not had those types of amenities. i also really prioritize equity and want to make sure that those neighborhoods that i've mentioned across the city are adequate represented, have that seat at the table, have the voice at and are open for business. just like just like other areas. i really want to make sure that the mta can

continue to make the city excel and surpass all of the expectations that we have to be the great place to live that i've grown up in and that that i hope to, you know, be in forever really. and then finally and i think that, you know, it's funny that find the money but also ensuring that we are caretakers of this resource that we ensure that the fiscal and financial viability of this agency is top tier and top notch, that we're able to have a successful the next 100, 150 years of our transit systems building and building neighborhoods and commuter city. i think it's one thing to create place, but really to create that sense of

community. and i think ensuring that the financial stability of this agency long term will make sure that we can create that community, that that that is so important. and so i look forward to all the work that we'll do here together. and i'd that's it . thank you so much. yes. really really grateful to both of you for sharing some some thoughts and just as a reminder for everyone, this was a question i asked all the members of the board at our february workshop at the beginning of this year, and we're closer now to the january workshop next year than we are to that one. so we'll have another opportunity to revisit priorities. but it's helpful for me as chair to know your priorities and i also think for staff and ensuring that we make sufficient air time at these meetings and staff resources are allocated to those priorities. so really appreciate that other members of the board, director yakusho. thank you so much. chair eken and i'm so

excited to see both of my new colleagues get all that shit done. and i believe that you can. i also see the fire marshals in the room, so i just want to acknowledge him. thank you for being here. fire marshal coughlin and. i. i have some new business a lot of you may have heard. maybe you didn't hear that i spent the last week and a half in israel, pretty much in and out of bomb shelters and decided to throw myself into the volunteer effort that had been going on there to collect donated items and deliver it to families who are suffering and being there was deeply inspired bring. i saw thousands of people come together, old and young people from all walks of life. and i actually was able to see in front of me what it looks like when a whole community can

come together to get things done, to put their differences aside and work as a unit. and it reminded me of why i am in this work. it reminded me of why i consider myself an organizer and an activist and why i came to san francisco. it inspired me and frankly, when i came back a few days ago, it made me really reconsider everything about about what i'm doing and how i spend my time and what motivates me and what lights me on fire. and so because of that, i decided that this is going to be my last meeting as an sfmta director and that i'm going to be leaving the board. i have so much respect for this agency and i know it's tough because we just got our full board. i have respect for the agency. i have respect for you all, and i have even more respect for the thousands and thousands of workers who allow us to do what we do. so i'm really, really proud of what we've been able to

accomplish on this board. navigating our aging agency through a once in a century dark time and a pandemic, and being in the trenches with all of you on fucking microsoft teams building the jfk promenade and building dozens of miles of transit only lanes, creating a new slow streets network, pushing this agency to create a connected network of bike lanes, helping institute a first in the nation. text before tow program re negotiating our contract with clear channel to clean our bus shelters and get them looking like we want them to look like and helping. working alongside jeff, tom and julie to get our internal house in order. i'm so proud of where this agency is now and all that we've been able to accomplish together over the last three years that i've been on this board. i have absolute confidence in the sf mta i have confidence in all of you and i'm so excited to cheer you guys on from the sidelines working with

directors ly and board and brinkman eken kahena hemminger. so henderson and hinsey has been one of the great honors of my life. this is a varsity team and i'm so proud of what we've been able to do together. so thank you for making me feel so welcome. thank you for giving me this opportunity and for believing in me. i've only just gotten started. and that is my new business is. who i know. is there a motion to approve or disapprove? i make a motion to reject the premise of director leaving colleagues. i know this is probably shocking news, so i want to make some space. not necessarily today, but at a future meeting. for some remarks and reflections and gratitude for director yekutiel. once you can gather your thoughts,

obviously, if anyone would like to add anything now, please feel free. but he has committed to me to come to at least one more meeting to be recognized for his service so we could do that. the next meeting perhaps. okay are there any other items of new or unfinished. director? so. i'll take this moment to say a few words because this is my new favorite neighbor for a few times in the past few months. and you or two. but is like to soon you are a legend. i always i met many many years ago in a lot of community benefiting event and he's always so enthusiastic about everything

that is for the community and i live in the mission so many cafe is always the corner where i will hang out with my girlfriends, you know, and seeing the place had looking really spiffy. and jesse now for me, it was before and i'm going to miss you a lot. i will take some moment to process what i also need to say more glorified version of what i feel about you. but i just feel a little missing you, you know, like you're just going to be an empty seat, you know? and but i think that the work that you do throw yourself out there in this past ten days where everyone was fleeting and trying to find a place to leave, you actually jump into the fire to help really, really, really. really hit really hit me. you know, it's like that selfless of courage to go out and do your part. and that's i had you have

my highest respect for you for to do that i'm just really grateful that you come home and safely and also use your ability to continue to do what you feel is the best use of your talent and your influence and advocating for the cause that you care for your. yes. and this is really heavy and it trumped over what i actually wanted to also share. and that is something that i thought that's also really important and it's a different topic, but many i just really, really appreciate you and we're going to continue to be working on a lot of other issues in other capacities, right? so i'm going to share another thing i wanted to share for last week. i attended well, this month is the filipino american filipino heritage month. so last week i got some time to actually i got invited to our cable car museum and

actually did that celebration with our filipino american asian friends and colleagues and staff and even our fellow i believe he's in entertainment commission . al perez was there. he also is the vice chair of the a asian heritage aapi, asian pacific islander heritage month organizer. so and our favorite secretary, christine, was there, too. and it was a really great moment where our equity, racial equity and belonging group find their time and actually some of the manager went across town to their favorite filipino stores to buy the best lumpia to share with everyone. and it was a very warm getting together moment in also in a very unsettled time of

our current world. and i think it's always good to take a moment and really reach out to our neighbors and friends and people that you you know or you don't know and you just get get together and celebrate each other's press alliance. and this is very important. i actually was saying that we every year we're going to go bigger. right, christine? every year we're going to go bigger and do more celebration because i am aware of that. we have a lot of filipino american in our agency, see, and i love all of them. they all have their talent and they spend overnight to decked out the cable car with the history of all the significant filipino americans that had contributed not only to san francisco, but the history of transportation in our city. so that was very important. and i want to share it to everyone. and please ride the cable car

with me next year. okay. if there's nothing further from my colleagues, i will open this item for public comment for anyone attending the meeting in person. board members. luke bornheimer. i missed manny's share director eukaryal share. so i don't know exactly what was said, but i gather that director director is stepping down or stepping away from the board. i'm saddened to hear that and i really appreciate the service that you've given our city, what you've done here, what you've done for our city. beyond this board. and yeah, i'm sad to hear that, but hopeful for your future and whatever that brings. thank you. next speaker, please.

hi, stacy randecker. i first just wanted to say i was so thrilled to hear your priorities. director so and director henderson kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, kids. the only thing i would say is can we also get them to bike to school, to the bus? is top notch. yes. we want muni. my kids are muni kids, but i wish they could have been bike kids to you and making places. oh my god. are we could have so many places if we just prioritized people instead of motor vehicle throughput in our city. and we really need to look for those spaces where we can bring people together, you know, and our merchant corridors, we have so many spots and on the east side of the city is doesn't have enough. i live in potrero and it's like i have to go on vacation to the west side to get all the good stuff. and i'd really like it in in our side of town to do and director curio i reject that. i mean i want what

is best for you. you've been i know people weren't really they were skeptical about you joining the board. but i hope all of those naysayers have been won over. i really appreciate so much what you've done and i guess maybe now you'll join valencia for people. i don't know. but all the best to you. we'll miss you. thank you. not seeing anyone else in the room. rise to speak, please open remote comment at this time. we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. moderator for speaker. great. can you hear me now? yes, go ahead. excellent. david pilpel good afternoon. i caught the end of director jacobi's comments. i appreciate his thoughts and it's great that he's back safely and i'm sure

that he won't be too far away or for very long. as with many, we have not always agreed, which is fine, but i think that we respect each other deeply, and i'm sure that we will communicate at some point soon. and i wish him the best and i think the board will be worse with his departure. anyway, thanks for listening on this item. thank you. no additional speakers. okay close close public comment and please call the next item place is you on item number seven, the director's report. thank you. directors and thank you directors. so and henderson for clarifying your priorities. a year nearly a year ago, back in february, we had a board budget workshop that we're preparing for again and one of the most

important aspects of that workshop is hearing from board members about your priorities, and particularly clarity about your values. that is how we make the hard decisions about allocating our increasingly limited financial and staffing resources. so the clearer you all can be, the easier it is for our team to make the hard choices that we have to make every day. and thank you, of course, to director curiel for your long service and partnership on this board. as we think about much of our work, a lot of our work is trying to align, not only with your values, but also the mayor's priorities, which include delivering on our housing responsibilities, safety and security on our streets, and also small business success and economic recovery. and one of the things, manny, that i really appreciate about you is you understand the nature of san francisco's boom bust economy that the san francisco of 2018 will never come back again. but what we excel at in san

francisco is figuring out what is next and our small business leaders like lead the world at figuring out what is next of upholding san francisco values and hopefulness and ingenuity at all levels and scales and bringing people together to figure out what kind of a city do we want to be. so even though you'll no longer be playing that role for us on the board, i know that you will be continuing to play that role as a small business owner and as one of the most important conveners in san francisco in these challenging times. now i'd like to go to my director's report. speaking of small businesses, we have recently launched our tiny little marketing team led by gene brophy here at the sfmta, launched a go local small business campaign in partnership ship with neighborhood associations and business associations across san francisco and really being led from our own sfmta small

business working group. so jean and her team partnered with local artist dan bransfield to do a set of psa campaigns highlighting our city's amazingly vibrant and diverse and creative small business district, all of which are there because of muni and muni is there because of them. as you know, san francisco has this unique geographic quality where we have long, skinny neighborhood commercial districts that follow the historic streetcar lines that muni was born from. and so small business recovery and muni's recovery go hand in hand. and as we'll talk about later, our our local business communities are now our main drivers of muni's ridership growth. so we're very happy to be promoting this this campaign. next up, speaking of small businesses, we're also happy to announce that governor newsom announced last week that

we and our partners at the department of public works would receive a clean california grant to the tune of $3.3 million. this is focused on allowing us to take our existing efforts at cleaning and upgrading all of our facilities and supercharge them so we're quite happy about that. we'll be focused on cleaning of shelters and stations, removing graffiti, improving lighting, doing much of the work that the team has been busy doing recently on the t third line, where we've been upgrading, for example, all every single one of the lighting fixtures, which are from 19 whatever technology in order to be more easily maintained, more energy efficient, more less vulnerable to vandalism and brighter for our riders. so we're going to be able to continue doing more of this effort focused on downtown and south of market chinatown and the muni metro system. and

thanks to existing contracts that we have in place, we'll be able to begin doing this work starting at the end of this month. the big news for this director's report, of course, is our legislative update. late last saturday, october 14th, was the deadline for governor newsom to either sign or veto bills. and there was a big long list of bills that we have been tracking. indeed, a long list of bills, some of which we have had as our number one legislative priority for over a decade. and i am very pleased to announce that the governor signed laura friedman's bill, ab 645, our top legislator priority, which authorizes finally speed safety cameras on a limited basis in california. california now joins us. most of the rest of the world and at least 18 us states, including states like mississippi and virginia and tennessee, in legalizing ing

this basic life saving technology that can cut traffic fatalities by as much as half. we were fortunate to have attended a celebration event hosted by walk sf last night that included a based basically the entire spectrum of policy makers here in san francisco, members of our board, many members of our staff, families for safe streets and advocates from all over san francisco, all of whom came together under a quite big tent in order to continually expand the coalition of people who could support this this measure by listening to them carefully and by incremental adjustments to the legislation to the point where it finally got signed. so thank you to all of you, and particularly jerry ekin, for your support. there's a couple of other bills that also got signed. ab 361 now allows local agencies like us to install

forward facing cameras on city owned vehicles to enforce double parking in the bike lanes, something that we have long wanted to be able to expedite. this technology will dramatically increase the efficiency of our parking control officers and allow us to make a bigger effort there. the governor also signed ab 434, which seeks to reduce harassment of women and other vulnerable groups on public transit by collecting better data related to these incidents. this builds basically it's modeled after the work that we have already been doing here at the sfmta, but it requires us, other agencies like ours to do similar work, that together we will be able to do better by having consistent data across the state and therefore the goal being to attract additional resources since the safety of women and girls and children are high priorities for this agency. ab 413 was also

signed into law. again taking work that we'd already been doing around daylighting here at the sfmta and making that state law. it prohibits drivers from parking or stopping within 20ft of a crosswalk with a bunch of very specific exceptions. other news we are collaborating with the police department, the district attorney's office and other agencies, ces, in order to support their efforts around reducing vehicle break ins. we have found ways to take advantage of our new parking meter technology to include messages on our parking meter screens, directing people to not leave their valuables in the car. those messages will be available in english and spanish and in chinese within a couple of weeks. we're also adding messages to the pay by phone app screen. and then finally, i wanted to report on our ongoing efforts to address state of good repair and our deferred

maintenance backlog throughout the system. one of the things that i have directed staff to do throughout the agency is to be very clear about the condition. one of our most important infrastructure. and so they have been dutifully investigating the reality of all of the vulnerable cities that we face throughout the system. and so the team, um, completed the most extensive inspection of our over 100 and over 100 year old twin peaks tunnel, the most detailed inspection that we had done in almost 50 years, including not only looking at all of the structure, but actually getting behind the structure into the plenum space between the tunnel structure and the raw rock. and in some cases old growth redwood beams that exist between the tunnel structure and the rock. this is an old tunnel. they were also able to obtain all of the records of all of the previous repairs have been done over the last 100 years and we're actually so grateful to our

predecessors for keeping such extreme, ordinarily good records on the state of the infrastructure. it reminds us of the responsibilities that we have to our successors. the team completed very, very microscopically detailed lidar surveys and created a full 3d model of the tunnel. they found. let me cut to the chase about the findings. so there are no immediate safety issues, which is a huge relief to me. but the tunnel is really old and it is starting to distort. this was something that was noticed 50 years ago and that distortion has continued a little bit. it will require some adjustments. and so what we're having the time now to do in a non-emergency way is actually figure out exactly what adjustments are needed, what strengthening. we're also, because of the lidar testing, can keep very, very close track so that we know if the urgency level increases and therefore we need to speed up repairs or if it's been 50 years, it can go

another 50 years without us needing to do much. so we are now working on the next phase of the project, which is to investigate what are the appropriate corrective actions and when those might happen, and then to incorporate that into our capital planning and that is the end of my report. thank you. director tumlin directors, do you have questions or comments on the director's report? director you could tell i don't know if you mentioned this in your report, but maybe you can. there were some. well, it has to do with governor newsom. there was some money that was allocated to us to clean the bus shelters. that's right. did you talk about that just now? i did. that was the clean california. was i just spacing out? okay no, no, no. that was the clean california grant. $3.3 million. yes i saw that. but how are we planning on using it? so we are working together with the

department of public works. so part of the money will go to supplies and equipment and so on for our own staff. a part of it will go to some existing contractors that we have that we already had on contract to help facilitate it. catching up with some deferred cleaning. but like how how do you think the san francisco public will know? will they notice it? how could they notice a difference with this additional money? well, what we hope is that folks will start noticing a difference like we're folks are starting to notice a difference on the t third line. so the upgrade the steady upgrading just our crews were out there. they removed all the rust from the railings that had been there since the 90s. we repainted everything. we changed it all the light fixtures. we removed all of the graffiti for the ad panels and maps. we were able to replace, like the clear covers that kind of gotten sun damage over time. so the goal is

a thousand small improvements rather than 1 or 2 really big improvements. the goal is to bring everything up to a state of cleanliness that that we would expect in a city like san francisco. okay. and then my second question and forgive me if you've also already said this , but when do you think the city can expect to start to see the implementation of the speed safety cameras, the speed safety cameras? the law doesn't go into effect until next year, and it requires us a series of part of the compromise of getting the bill passed was the requirements for a series of equity studies and community engagement and a lot of discussion around placement. so right now, the team has already gotten started. i been under the assumption that the governor was going to sign the bill. the team had gotten started and developing a detailed timeline as well as getting ready to make asks of other organized actions for ways of being able to help us shorten that timeline. the team is committed to san francisco being

the first to having cameras in place. great. thank you very much. thank you. director hemminger, please. thank you, madam chair. and maybe i'll begin where my colleague ended on the speed cameras and i do want to congratulate you, jeff, and your team, for getting the bill through a fairly, at times hostile environment in sacramento and i'm. i was a skeptic. i think, to begin with, that we would get there and we've gotten there. so i do want to thank you thank our mutual employee, kate breen, who made her this her life's work in the last five years. and i'm glad we are where we are. one thing that would be helpful to me to try to assess this is a pilot project right? it's time limited. so we've got to go out there and do the best we can and then we'll go back and go through the

mother may game again, given the fact that it is a pilot. what i wanted to know is, is we're we're limited to 33 of these devices is what what would the number be if we were just skipping a pilot and just implementing this as a citywide? i'd project how many how many cameras would we be looking at? 100, 234. i mean, what's how big is this pilot? that's what i'm asking. i mean, the authorized pilot is indeed small and one of the things that we are focused on is making sure that the pilot is successful in order to create the case that we can go back to the legislature and either continue it or expand the program. and that means not only demonstrating success in reducing speeding and reducing traffic violence, but also addressing many of the fears

that opponents had put forward around privacy and equity. and that's those are two key. consider asians in the bill language itself that we are ready to focus on demonstrating that we can protect the privacy of individuals and make sure that this technology is not being used to create more harm for people who had been targeted in in in in traffic stops in the past. so it is a pilot, but can you characteri size it for me at all? we believe. 10% or 10. i mean, how big how big is this relative to what we would need as a citywide program? this is a very small pilot, right? so we're limited to 33 cameras. we have a lot more intersections in our high injury network than 33.

so one of the things that we are hoping to be able to test with this pilot is efficacy as well as trust. and if we are successful, feel like this should be one of our primary tools for addressing the worst cause of traffic violence, which is excessive speed by people driving cars. but i mean, you're just indicating that we've we've got a fairly long road to hoe. correct. to get to that kind of answer, get it back to sacramento and then scale it up right? that's right. and that's why we appreciate the extreme patience and inexhaustibility of people like kate breen, who just kept coming back again and again until we got this passed and so the sooner we can demonstrate success, the easier it is to go back to the legislature. well and look, i know i've been a bit of a broken record about this,

but i think it's also the case that this pilot is not going to scale soon enough and big enough to dent the numbers that we keep seeing every week and month, which to me means we've got to keep banging on the police department to help us enforce this. the law that's right. the speed cameras have a lot of benefit from them for a lot of reasons, but they're we're five years away. it sounds like to me, before we've got something that we can really make a dent with. that's right. so this is we have achieved one major win in our legislative program. we have a long list of other desired legislative changes that we could also make. and i think following from the lessons of particularly the european union, one which has not faced that the dramatically escalating rates of traffic violence that we have in the united states, but is

instead actually address the problem they address the problem through a long list of legislative changes that we are eager to see. also here in the united states and in california. thank you. and just a quick question on another subject, which is the twin peaks tunnel. the i didn't hear you say the word seismic was was that part of the assessment that we made of that tunnel and its stability? yes. so we investigate it. all of the conditions, both the seismic condition. there's a lot of water. there's a whole river in the tunnel that we need to understand and manage around. there is there's the concrete itself. there's the structure between the concrete and the rock wall. there's also the very old anchors for the overhead wire. and of course, everything related to the track bed and the switches, although that was work that we had addressed previously. so the focus was the

structure itself. okay. thank you, madam chair. thank you. director kahina, please. thank you. chair ekin. question about ab 4346 is the bill against the harassment of women? so just wanted to get more context on how how the passing of this bill will expand our efforts to make transit safer for both operators and for riders. that's right. and the focus of the bill is collecting data. so the best way for us to be able to help ourselves allocate our limited resources, but also so be transparent to the public about how we're how what our need is and how we're addressing that need is, is by collecting data and then being transparent about that data. so some of the work that our security chief, kimberly burris, just did this week is creating a new set of dashboards around operator and

parking control officer assaults because that is a core part of our effort at addressing safety is both the street users and transit riders, but also our employees. and so we have been working to get way ahead of this bill to make sure that we've got solid data around the passenger experience and our employee experience. you can find our muni passenger safety data online. already we have published that broadly. it is at , i believe it's. at sfmta.com/muni data, but you can certainly search for muni safety data and we publish our safety incidents per 100,000 miles by category and they're in two different categories. they're in the top. there's a pull down menu and you could look at the historic data tracking a long, long time back. plus the new, more recent data where we

expanded our definition of assault. so one of the things that was very clear that was important to our security chief is we need to include assault, not just, you know, exterior facing violence that's going to require a trip to the hospital, but also experiencing harassment on muni because that it's that whole array of experiences that folks face on muni that determines whether they feel safe and comfortable and therefore are willing to ride. so we expanded our definition in order to make sure that we are fully encompassing all of those factors. so with the passing of this particular bill, the signing of this bill, this effort is now expanded statewide . that's right. so does that mean that we can now share data across agencies and work with different law enforcement jurisdictions? or how does how does that connection get created? yeah, i don't know the

details of how that connection gets created, but what the bill sets is standard ised data collection efforts which we will be complying with. and then ideally that helps us create a stronger case and stronger coalition at the state level to get both funding as well as legislative changes to address the core problems. and that's great because we have a few different transit systems that operate within san francisco. and so it's great to see that. now we have a statewide effort to make all transit safer for riders. thank you. thank you. director henderson, please. thank you, chair. i just had a question about ab 361. the or whichever number it is about the front facing cameras is there or do you have an idea of what the financial impact would be to implement that? i thought that that existed already. so is there a capital expenditure that is going to have to that you

anticipate now that this is authorized? yeah. so we have forward facing cameras on our muni busses that allow us to enforce double parking in the transit lane. this effective takes that same authorization in and gives us the ability to put cameras in our other vehicles to enforce double parking in the bike lane. and so we would use the basically the same techniques where we have pico parking control officers who review video at extreme fast forward and then stop and then manually issue a citation. there is a pretty significant cost to adding vehicle, adding cameras to our vehicles. but as we know from the cameras that are on our transit vehicles, there's also significant benefit. well beyond being able to enforce illegal parking. the. 11 or 12 cameras on our transit vehicles are a critical component of our

efforts to address both safety as well as crime. and that data, when it's reported to the police department in time we can save our video data and use that for evidence in any kind of investigation. okay. thank you. thank you, director. so. i'll make it really short, but i wanted to ask something else that you mentioned about how we can help with with car thieves in the city. and i'd like to see if i read an article recently last week about how this lady were able to find her stolen car through looking at the her citations on her car wreck record. so director tumblin, i wonder what can we do to help people get their stolen car back and then how are we how can we

alleviate these financial burdens of those tickets that these poor car owners end up having to live with? but they weren't the one that actually make the decision to park in an illegal spot. so how can we help them and also maybe work together with sfpd and it just leave it all to you? an open ended question. yes. no, that's a very timely question. so the mayor issued a directive last week following that san francisco chronicle story ordering us to collaborate with the san francisco police department to make sure that we that our databases could talk to each other and that we could not only identify stolen vehicles, but also like not not cite the owner of the rightful owner of that vehicle for a violation. this has caused us to do an

investigate mission into why we are no longer able to do that. so we used to be able to automatically do that and i was mistaken in the underlying reasons why. so one of the things that i had understood was that the city's privacy ordinance was an obstacle that is not correct from our current understanding that there is an administrative process that we may need to go through in order to allow databases to talk to each other. but the burden for solving this problem is on the sfmta. so we had legacy software that we had been using that software is no longer being maintained. and so what we need to do is just defined the api or updated software in order to allow the databases to talk to each other. again and that work is the responsibility of the sfmta and we are working hard on it. and in the meantime, um, we do try to make it very easy. so

sometimes as our parking control officers make mistakes or sometimes a motorist was doing something in good faith and inadvertently gets a parking citation, we try to make it very easy to protest citations and many citations can be dismissed administratively. so so there's a form online that's easy to find just sfmta dismissed parking citation or protest citation and so long as somebody has evidence, it's like a police report that my car was stolen. it is very easy for us to dismiss those citations that were that were written despite the good faith of the individual motorist. we don't. we don't ever want to be in the position of compounding harm that our residents face. uh, yeah. i trust that we don't want to do that. and i just wanted to see if anything that you need. the board's help to continue to expedite that effort. i think

that will we're all open here to help you. yes both thank you for that. the board of supervisors includes president peskin has expressed as well the desire that if there's any legislative fix that's necessary, that we will fix it. i believe all of the problem rest on my shoulders and with with our staff team. so we will get moving on making that happen. thank you. thank you, director. so, um, i just wanted to comment also on the just pause on the ab 645 victory as well. colleagues, i attended the celebration event that walkoff put on last night and i'm sort of still pinching myself that this is the world that we're living in now, which is a world where something we thought for so long was not possible is in fact not come to pass. it's really quite remarkable. and i do want to

just shout out continued to staff kate breen, though she's on vacation. katie angotti, though she just had a baby when no ricardo julia for their work shaping the bill and of course just you jeff for having the sharp focus and reminding people again and again this is such a barrier to our efforts. and also just for putting in the work yourself and making trips to sacramento and getting this across the finish line. i also want to just acknowledge the mayor and her staff for coming out early in support on this bill and that encouraged so many other cities to get on board. and then just thank you to the staff, the advocates and community and anybody else who did anything else to get this bill across the finish line. it's really a remarkable victory , and i hope we can all just really pause and celebrate this moment. that's all i had. if there are no other director comments, i'm going to open it up for public comment on the director report. sorry, that's

going to be item nine is not is so we're on seven now, then eight, then nine. yep. hi. board members. luke bornheimer first, i want to thank director tomlin staff and the board, especially chair ekin and walk san francisco and the san francisco bicycle coalition for their work and advocacy on ab 645 and speed enforcement cameras. speed enforcement cameras will make the 33 streets that they're installed on likely in 2025 safer. that said, there's no good reason to wait until 2025 to install these cameras or more red light cameras, which the agency hasn't used its full authority to install more of or install faster. and we need the agency to choose locations for speed enforcement cameras and install them as soon as possible. ideally in the first half of 2024 since director

hemminger mentioned arm traffic enforcement by sfpd, i think it's important to highlight what we know will make our streets safer and directly address our roadway safety crisis, as well as our climate crisis. our public health crisis and car traffic and noise and air pollution in our city. the single best thing we can do to address this all of these things is create a connected network of protected bike lanes throughout our city, starting construction immediately be a connected network of protected bike lanes will make more people feel safe using bikes, scooters and other forms of active transportation to get around our city. and we can start creating that connected network of protected bike lanes. now for example, by agendizing and approving the 17th street quick build project, which has been purposefully delayed through private discussions within the city. we do not need to wait for the active communities plan to be finalized and approved. we can and should start immediately. i urge you to direct director tumlin and staff to start installing a connected network of protected bike lanes immediately. we need you to lead for our city in the planet. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. hi, stacy

randecker and ditto all of that that luke just said. and director tomlin, i think you forgot to mention the sponsorship of the san francisco city football club. it's a brilliant placement for muni. i'm glad to see it. i'm a potrero mom of a footballer who practices at beach chalet. if we could get travel times to and from all of our soccer pitches to 45 minutes or less, it would be truly golden. and about our small business owners, can we turn those merchant corridors into pedestrian ized places? if busses are not easily rerouted, making it transit only is possible. cities all over the world do this, including the very exotic san jose who has transit on a pedestrian ized plaza. if we really want to do right by our by our merchants, we would look to the throngs of people that are out for every sunday streets saturdays on valencia, weekends on hayes and that glorious night market that was out in the sunset. we can

get goods to merchants. we can ensure accessibility for those who need it. we need these spaces for the vibrancy of san francisco and to meet our safety and climate goals. could we please stop wringing our hands on this and get moving to work for everyone? and yay for speed cameras? but and we will always need something like this. but streets with concrete protected bike lanes, concrete diverters at the ends every few blocks and chicanes with manny's redwood groves are impossible to speed upon. thank you. thank you. any other speakers in the room on the director's report? otherwise let's open, please. remote at this time we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. moderator for speaker. thank you. i hope

you can hear me. chair amanda, you can o. olivia dew point for the record, she and her i talk about the director's report. very good report. i'm excited about the lighting improvements. i'm very cognizant of that when i'm in the stations and tunnels and just want to get the best technology that we can. i have actually have entire led lighting in my home. so it works and the tunnel work is very, very important to me. you know, hear people talk much about that. but i'm very passionate about the tunnel and it's not easy getting across the city. if there's issues with that tunnel. my resume with the twin peaks tunnel is not very long. going back to about 2009. but i do have 43 years of experience using the north river tunnels,

which are under the hudson river between new york and new jersey. and they were opened in november of 1910. and they are really getting old and sometimes it's scary riding through those. i rode through those a couple of weeks ago. and so we don't want to let our tunnel get to that point. and yes, there were some other issues with in new york city with the superstorm, but still, we have to keep after the tunnel. and i appreciate the explanation about how this tunnel works because i thought it was just concrete all the way through making this 30s. so that's very important legislation. we're doing. all right. i'm generally in alignment that i'm not really an expert on that. and i did hear a mention about director yekusiel. i said it right. i can't say i ever really met director yekusiel, but i wish very well.

i really do. and maybe, maybe, perhaps, maybe i will meet up in new york city subway. true. your time is up next. speaker. herbert weiner, director tumlin pointed out the importance of small businesses to the economy and thriving of san francisco. now it should be noted with the institute of corridors on mission street, taraval street and now gary street, small businesses have folded. and what is going to be done about the restitution of these small businesses? the projects resulted in diminishing revenue and too many businesses, small businesses had to give up shop. so my concern is the restitution of small businesses and the

advocacy of it in the light of mta projects which were actually detrimental to them. thank you. thank you. next speaker. hello good afternoon. this is barry toronto. i want to wish director yekutiel hallelujah to him after what he witnessed in the last week or so. i would blame him for changing his priorities and for stepping down. but i want to thank him for his help with working with small businesses, including taxis. the problem is we can't get enforcement at taxi stands and we are small businesses providing a service for people to go and frequent small businesses in different areas as well. but but we can't get enforcement at the cab stands in these in these small

business areas, such as 24th and mission, which brings about the bill about harassment of female pco's while they're giving tickets over there. so it'd be great if they were protected while they're giving tickets at the cab stand at 24th and mission. but we can't get any help. we can't get any enforcement. so and the next thing about getting congratulations on. ab 645 the only problem is what do we do about the errant scooter riders who run red lights and speed through crosswalks and also pedestrians who take risks and walk while the light is green in the opposing direction at intersections, the for the word is no longer a good word of jaywalking. but you taking your life in your own hands when you are crossing the street, when

you have the red light at the pedestrian. so i think at the same time, while promoting this speed camera program, you're also promoting that pedestrians also observe the walk signals. thank you very much for your time. and i'm surprised you didn't mention anything about jaime parks and tom maguire. thank you. callers. okay that will close public comment. please call the next item lisa is you on item number eight, the citizens advisory council report . good afternoon, directors. it's a pleasure to address you today. director yukkuri will allow me to, on behalf of the cac, thank you for your service. we're sorry you're leaving the board, but we've always appreciated your passion for small businesses, us, and especially for the riders of san francisco and especially district eight. so thank you. we had three presentations at our last meeting. it was a long one.

the first one was on the 2024 legislative program and our motion was as follows. the sf mta cac recommends that the sfmta board adopt the 2024 legislative program priorities as presented. i'm assuming they are coming to you soon and so you'll see the same presentation. we saw something similar next. we had a very long presentation on the valencia bikeway pilot, which has been rather i know you've received a lot of feedback about it. we've received a lot of feedback about it. not much of if any of it positive. and our recommendation is as follows the sfmta cac recommends abandoning the current unintuitive and dangerous center running bicycle lane pilot on valencia and refocusing the street toward its core needs commercial deliveries. bicyclists outdoor diners and pedestrians by pursuing a road geometry that disincentivizes nonresidential traffic. and finally, we also

heard a very interesting presenter session on autonomous vehicles, which everyone is very interested in as of late. and our recommendation is as follows the sfmta cac endorses the sfmta sfcta and sf planning commission's request for a rehearing of the california public utilities commission august 10th, 2023. approval of unlimited numbers of cruise and waymo vehicles charging for passenger rides 24 over seven in all neighborhoods of the city without doubt, an environmental impact report. again, we i think like staff, we think there should be a greater level of transparency on autonomous vehicles and how they're working or not working in san francisco streets for to the benefit of everyone. thank you all for your time. colleagues, do you have questions for chair lee for. i did, if you wouldn't mind. please go ahead. director hinsey yeah. um, i. jennifer, thank you

for your engagement. for those of us who missed the meeting, we know about your recommendation for valencia, but if you could provide a little bit more color as to maybe some of the reasons why your members might, might have landed on the recommendation that you did, that would be i'd be interested in know just a little bit about tenor, that discussion. sure, sure. for the motion was not unanimously passed. and i think some people on the council were very concerned and we heard feedback from small businesses that are very concerned about having access to being able to park and for their employees. as we heard from a local bar owner who is in danger of losing her business that she's had for many, many years. i think some

of us were swayed by that. and also, again, we've heard consistent feedback from cyclists that the middle bikeway is unsafe. they don't like it, they don't want to use it, and they either want to move to a geometry that has a protected bike lane on the outside of the street rather than in the center of the street, which would require i mean, it's valencia is not a big street. it's small. and something's going to have to give. and i think the thing that people think might have to give would be through traffic, which could probably be routed onto guerrero, which has a lot of traffic on it or mission, which has traffic on it as well. um thank you for the thank you for that additional information. very helpful. sure. my pleasure. ucucha. what do you mean? get rid of through traffic? i'm sorry. what traffic does? what does that mean? exactly? what traffic i didn't getting rid of through traffic. like cars that

are just driving down valencia like a non resident because there are residences on valencia. so residents would want to have access to the street but not like people just driving down valencia. so the idea would be to have it be restricted to like folks that live on valencia would be the only ones that could drive on it. hypothetically. yes i think that's kind of what they were what we were leaning towards. okay, thanks. sure thank you. i also had sort of some follow up questions specifically on this last phrase, which is by pursuing a road geometry that disincentivizes non residential traffic. just wondering if you could bring us in on your thinking. were there are certain like scenarios you had talked about or what led the commission to make this decision? again, i think those who supported the motion were really wanting something more where valencia is more pedestrianized and i think that's kind of where they were. i think that's where they were trending. and it was it was compromised language that we

worked out to try and get them to get the motion passed because i think some folks wanted pretty much no cars at all. other folks wanted cars. so we could have so it would be much more aggressive to say for businesses and things like that. but i think this was sort of the compromise that was reached. i don't know if that fully answers your question. no, it's helpful. that's helpful. dr. tumlin, can you remind us when the update is coming on valencia street? we talked about, i think december when we adopted it. i see sitting in the back livable streets lead. jamie parks as well as soon to be acting livable streets lead. kimberly leong, who's the currently the project manager for valencia yeah. sorry hop on in. hi kimberly liang, the project manager for the valencia bikeway project. we plan to return as soon as january 2024. we're in the process of collecting data right now for the project, and we've asked her

to come back so we can give you a recommendation on on the pilot extension, because i think you're looking whether or not to extend the pilot in january. right so in january. when we return, we'll have information from our three month evaluation mark. and as a part of that, we'll have any recommendations for where we should head next with this pilot, whether it be improvements or adjustments that need to be made. okay. thank you. yeah. it's our intention to give you a recommendation as well. once we hear the data. okay thank you for your report and for your service. oh, sorry. i didn't see you. yes, director. so go ahead. oh, sorry. sorry i'm always a little today. i'm a little bit lag of my, my response was delayed, so i apologize. thank you, chair. thank you for sharing. all your input is very, very insightful and really liked it. and i keep thinking i actually live in the mission and i've seen the evolution of what's happening in

valencia and yeah, we need to continue to refine this. and i like most part of your recommendations and i just keep thinking your last sentences, which our chair had brought up, if you can elaborate. and i thought of this morning, i spent my whole morning holding hands with one of my really senior mentor just to walk ten steps up to the alamo square park. and i know that i have a lot of my mentors that are actually we enjoy time to go to nice restaurant. and so spend like a morning and lunch or dinner. so if we can you explain to me your recommendation. so how am i going to get my mentor to actually enjoy these restaurants on valencia if she can actually walk really just just five steps

or ten steps? i'm just looking at people who actually can't bike, can row. right. and they are relying on paratransit or their loved ones if they're lucky and fortunate enough to have the resource, to have their loved ones actually drive them, to get them to where they can go to, to have their normal social life or sometimes simply some efficacy of community work. so i just wanted to see if you your, your your group had thought about the equity component of that was that yeah, we did get a comment. a public comment like that. and personally i think that's a very insightful comment and something that needs to be considered as we again try to figure out all of the competing priorities for that very slim street. but yeah, some people, a car is the only option really, especially if we're not running transit down valencia anymore, which we aren't. it's and it's not really fair to say, well

it's only a block away and, well, a block can be a mile for some people. exactly i think that's a very good point. okay. would you would is a good point. would you would you refine your recommendation or maybe bring it back into to us to see what you. i think that's something we'll need to consider once we get the data and we come back with a recommendation in january. that would be great. thank you. thank you. director hensley has a question for you as well. sure i do. sorry, charlie, for to put you on the hot seat today. but you did you did mention that you intend to come back to us with a recommendation. so i'm trying to figure out what your recommend for us today is or should we be should we be holding off basically until you come back with your. i think the recommendation in january. yeah, that's a good no, that's a good point. i think the thrust of the

council's recommendation today is moving away from the center bike lane. i think that's the real that's the meat of it. and then but you're still going to wait until the project is evaluated to come and write another recommendation. yes i think we felt that since staff was going to issue a recommendation to you in january , we thought we would chime in as well. okay got it. okay. thank you for your service. you bet. let's open public comment on the cac report items, please, for those in the room. thank you . thank you. hi. board members. luke bornheimer, i urge you to take the cac unprecedented recommendation and direct staff

to immediately replace this valencia street center bikeway with either curbside protected bike lanes or pedestrianization of the street, which can include access for commercial deliveries. local residents and people with disabilities. as more people are crashing or being hit, killed or injured on valencia with the center bikeway and significantly more than the portion of valencia where curbside protected bike lanes were installed in 2019 and multiple evaluation by sfmta staff showed that cars parked in the bike lane decrease their 99. close calls decreased to 100, and the number of people biking increased 49. curbside protected bike lanes work phenomenally well. improved safety for all people, including drivers, and increase revenue for local businesses and they can be installed on valencia using quick build materials in months, if not weeks in an email, sfmta staff told me they didn't create a design for curbside protected bike lanes because the design

wouldn't allow for car parking on both sides of the street. only 56 days after the center bikeway pilot was officially started, an 80 year old man was killed on valencia. countless other people have crashed or been injured as a result of the center bikeway and even more have had close calls which could have resulted in them being killed or seriously injured, including a mom with a kid on her bike. about a week ago, the people of san francisco and our planet need you to take immediate action to make valencia safer for people, better for business and effective for fighting climate change. i urge you to take the unprecedented recommendation in and direct staff to immediately replace the valencia street center, bikeway with either curbside protected bike lanes or pedestrianization of the street, which can include access for commercial deliveries, local residents and people with disabilities. as you are the only people who can help us and we need you to take immediate action to protect us, our local businesses and the planet. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. hi, stacy randecker. i

could talk all day about valencia, but i did want to say to director so, so i agree with everything that luke said, although i'm all for pedestrianization for as much of the corridor that it makes sense at this time. i think at the lower end and the protected bike lanes are working fine and it doesn't have quite the vibe that the center of, of valencia does. as for your mentor and friend, i totally understand my dad who recently passed, he was he couldn't walk either. it would have been an issue for him. but what i would say is what do you do when you take them to the airport? what do you do when you take them to the mall? that's the same thing that we would ask to be done for valencia. we do not want to limit accessibility to anyone when we're talking about pedestrianization, but we have to change our mind about what accessibility really means. as i was out on valencia, i've been out there the last three saturday nights all night that it's closed and the things that i've seen the people in the mobility scooters, the dad with

the teen daughter with a like a glider sort of apparatus, there's it's so wide. there's nowhere else you can go. you could never do that on a sidewalk. you could only do that on like jfk. great highway when it's closed or a place like valencia, i don't know where they live. i was too know i didn't want to go bother them, but it just was like where does she have to go? like this to see the little kids out on their strider bikes and stuff? we don't have that on our side of town. we need spaces like this. it does so much for the merchants. and if it's not working, then we have to figure out how to make it work. our city and our planet, the people who live here, we need it to be more livable. we need it to be a place where people can go and want to go. and there it's full of life. not just cars. we can do this. we need as an agency, as the city. we need to start saying how can we do it differently? not like what is the problem? what is the one off case? how do we solve for as

much as possible? that's what we need to move forward. thank you. thank you. any other speakers in the room for item eight? seeing none, please open the phone at this time we'll move to remote public comment, not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment on item number eight should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. moderator for speaker. hello. good afternoon again and sorry toronto. as you know, valencia street already is traffic calming because you you have to stop in every every light down valencia street unless you're going really slow. so it's already not lights are not timed. the only problem is you can't get off of valencia street because you can't make any left turns in that area. so the center. so i applaud the for wanting to abandon in this

failed experiment of the center running bike lane. i also want to applaud the cac for endorsing the rehearing request by the city attorney and the city departments just the other night at bill graham civic auditorium, there was a rave like event going on at and one of the autonomous vehicles ran into the barrier blocking grove street between larkin and paul. it does not recognize these items that close streets off temporarily. so there has it has to go back to the drawing board to deal with these. unlike unlikely situations that their autonomous vehicles can't figure out. thank you very much for your time. thank you. next speaker. afternoon, directors. this is cyrus hall. i'm calling as a bike rider who rides in valencia

sometimes i'm frustrated to hear that agency will not be bringing an update until january on the valencia bike lane. the number of issues that have been reported. we've had a death. we've had a number of injuries. is calls for more urgency on this issue than waiting until january. i want to give a couple examples. when you're writing down the center bike lane and sfpd decides that they don't decide they have an emergency and they're using the center lane to get to where they're going as quickly as possible. you as a writer have nowhere to go. you do. you have to bet that other traffic is going to behave perfectly and cautiously as you try to escape the oncoming vehicle while in the lane. i don't know how this wasn't thought about when this was when this was designed. the bike turn boxes are death traps. no one wants to use them. no one wants to be in those boxes because it requires drivers to behave perfectly and drivers don't

behave perfect. i urge a faster sped up analysis of the incidents the agency is aware of and quicker action on this issue . thank you very much. thank you . no additional speakers. i'll close public comment. i see director hemminger has a comment . thank you, madam chair. and i apologize for not raising this earlier. you know, i fear that we're headed toward another show on valencia in january. if all we're going to be talking about is the results of the pilot with the center running lane. i believe i made the point when we originally considered this item that we really only had one option in front of us and that it was worthwhile doing being a pilot and doing an evaluation session. but it sort of compared

to what an and one thing that's clearly been mentioned is a more traditional protected bike lane on the outside, which obviously is going to interfere with parking given the geometry of the road. and the other one is what we've done on market, which is to eliminate private vehicles , which comes with its own set of trouble, but it strikes me that if we only have one option in front of us again, we're liable to get the same result, which is a room full of unhappy people on each side, determined that they've got the point of view. i mean, some of the testimony now is getting a little bit ideological and i thought one of our purposes was to try to turn down the temperature a little bit. so, jeff, maybe you could just give us a sense of your expectation of how much work we can do to by

january or if it's a month or so later, whatever, in having 2 or 3 legitimate options on the table instead of just one with a bunch of people shooting yes and no at it. so excuse me, chair, may i interrupt? deputy city attorney susan cleveland-knowles i did just want to remind the board that the item that was agendized today was a report from the cac and that the broader topic of valencia is not on the agenda today. so think if jeff wants to give a brief response, i think that's fine. but we should probably in their report was this item, right? yeah right. but this is you've asked questions and sought clarification from the cac about their resolution on which was the identified object. not a full not a full discussion of valencia. and so i would just

urge some caution. i mean, i think we can respond to director hemings's question, but but it's just really about what the cac reported to you, what i am hearing is direction from director hemminger that when we come back to you in january, that we evaluate an array of options. yeah. in short, that's it. so if you're going to do that, i'm happy and i hope our council is happy to. yeah, i'm no issues. sorry, i didn't know how long the discussion was going to go on. thank you. okay thank you. let's please call the next item. next item. very good. item number nine. general public comment. members of the public may address the board of directors on matters that are within the board's jurisdiction, but not on today's calendar hour. i do have a speaker card for stacy randecker. okay go

ahead. hi, my name is rex ridgeway. i'm the president of the ptsa at lincoln high school. and i'm here to talk about a situation with the number 48 bus. this is a condensed timeline of correspondence from our assistant principal to a person who works at the here. i won't name the name, but i'll just give you the date. september 20th, 26. the 40. the number 48. number 8657 stopped by this school, did not open the doors and drove off without picking up anybody. september 27th. thank you for your time with us. the 48 number 8847 was listed as not in service and just drove by by october second 48. number three, 48 busses on friday after school drove by our kids and did not pick them up. the bus numbers were eight, eight, 98812 and 8888. october

3rd two weeks ago. our assistant principal emailed this individual and said, i know that you are investigating. do you have any follow up? our community is wondering if there's any improvement since you notified us. and to my knowledge as of this morning, two weeks have passed and we don't know what's going on. so i'm here because i have time and i would like to. and the assistant principal called me and said, rex, can you do something? i said, i'll make a public comment. thank you. so, sir, the board can't address your item, but al ramos, who's in the audience, can direct you to the right folks in our transit division. okay. thank you so much. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. hi. board members. luke

bornheimer. i urge you to immediately approve a citywide no turn on red policy and direct staff to create a plan for implementing that policy as soon as possible to make it safer, easier and more comfortable for people to cross our streets and increase safety for all people, especially for children, seniors and people with disabilities, as well as people who walk, bike and even drivers during your meeting two weeks ago, the board of supervisors unanimously approved supervisor preston's resolution urging you to approve a citywide no turn on red policy on the resolution's first reading of a remarkable event for the board of supervisors and a historic moment for our city. since the board of supervisors unanimous approval urging you to approve a citywide policy. more than 15 news outlets have covered the public campaign i started that's support voters have sent you and other policy makers more than 5000 emails in the san francisco chronicle and los angeles times covered the approval. and this morning, the guardian covered it as well. this is an amazing opportunity for you and our city to lead on

a proven street safety improvement that will make our streets instantly safer, especially for children, seniors and people with disabilities. as well as people who walk, bike and drive. i urge you to immediately approve a citywide no turn on red policy and direct staff to create a plan for implementing that policy as soon as possible to make it safer, easier and more comfortable for people to cross our streets and increase safety for all people, especially for children, seniors and people with disabilities, as well as people who walk, bike and even drivers. for anyone who supports a no turn on red, please go to or rssf.com. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. hi stacy randecker again . so you all probably know that we are in a global climate emergency and even though we hear do rarely suffer the ill effects of severe weather, it is

not the case with the rest of the world. transportation is the number one single contributor to climate change for san francisco, california and the united states. we need to change absolute absolutely everything about how people and goods move at the same time, our streets have been particularly dangerous for those outside of car. instead of reaching vision zero, we're at zero vision making effectively no impact in the near decade since our supervisors initially resolved that we would eliminate deaths from transportation trans base where sfmta gets its traffic injury data has not been updated since march 31st. it has been without an owner since july 1st, so sfmta, or at least the public is flying blind. with regard to the state of our streets, i realize that eliminating transportation and greenhouse gas emissions and traffic deaths

seems like an impossibility. but we must. and they are absolutely intertwined. and i am echoing what i have heard many of you say that this agency needs to get creative about making change, change that our city and our planet require year. could we reinstitute the innovation position that sfmta once had someone that is thinking about how to solve these very large issues and bring forth a variety of solutions every time? could we have someone that is responsible for vision zero, someone that will ensure that the data is up to date available to the public completely comprehensive and reports out changes to be or a thorough analysis for keeping the status quo of our streets. too often i hear that. oh, it's fine, no changes need to be made. that's your time. thank you. we need to make change. thank you. next speaker, please. i'll make this

quick. my issue today in and quite frequently is parking tickets in the city. the number one thing that says i think that we should make some changes is if you google what city has the most expensive parking tickets? there's articles that come out. it's always san francisco at the top. and we're a city that that prides herself on on on on change. and focusing on low income people. and i think it's shameful that we have that and yeah it's very frustrating and i and i understand you were talking earlier about the administrative process for dismissing citations. i think that the reasons that you can give or the reasons that that citation will be dismissed administratively are kind of kept secret. and it's somewhat

of a convoluted process. and then you have to go to the second level through the kangaroo court. and the third one, you have to pay everything and then pay more to go before a real judge. and i've done that and i won. yay but it's a struggle and it lasts months to get to get a refund. i just think it's an issue that should be addressed. and i know you're following the law, but i think the city can can go beyond that and make it more more focused on on the residents. thank you. thank you. no other speakers in the room. please open the remote public comment at this time. we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. moderator first speaker, thank you. chair amanda alito. dupree for the record, she and her speak generally, i'm just an ordinary

user of muni. maybe i'm one of a very rare few, but i am. i hope you hear me all right. and how do we build the best muni? we can? i often learn things in other places. i read about a program in new jersey on nj transit called ride kinds and saying hate has no place, hate has no seat on our system. um, i would like to see us have that kind of work here at muni because i want to feel fully included on muni and i feel very fortunate that your senior staff has fully included me and welcomed me in the things that muni. but the leadership really comes from you. so i've been away from you for a little while, but i did go to new york city and i did ride on their legendary system called a subway . and every time i wrote it while wearing a skirt, nobody

tried to stop me from using the system in new york. i don't think anybody would do it on muni, but i ask that you not entertain any kind of hate on muni because i want to be able to use the system fully and hopefully i'll use the autonomous vehicles which will offer me a safe skirt friendly way for me to traverse the city. i'm just waiting for my 30s code . um. some of you have not met me, but i hope to be meet you at a meeting in person soon along with the senior staff that has always welcomed me fully on this system. senior staff can can only do so much because they work for you. muni needs. the tone for muni needs to be set by you and i ask that you build the most welcoming system we can. we can learn from new jersey and

new york. thank you. next speaker. is herbert weiner. i wish to speak on the extension of parking hours. now you've pointed out that, you know, you need extended parking hours for more revenue, but this could be greatly offset by the need to employ additional staff to enforce the parking hours. so in essence, the overhead cancels out the benefits of the revenue. so i think this is really a self destructive measure. it's going to alienate the public. it's going to hurt businesses, and it's basically a loser all the way around. and when you want to extend those parking hours, you better think three times before you do it. this is a very

destructive measure. and it really will not improve service delivery from mta. thank you. thank you. next speaker. hello. good afternoon. this is barry toronto again. um, i first want to applaud you have another great employee in the taxi division in addition to peter woods is scott leone. scott leone helps arrange for temporary taxi stands for special events. and i appreciate what he did to help us while the lesbians who are occupying the complete block of castro street. so thank you, scott, for working on that project. i want to say, though, is that because your mobility investigators are spending more time on scooters, we're still having the legal

solicitations going on in the cab staging area, particularly at chase center. and we're having a problem with not having an investigator after concerts and basketball games there. now that basketball season is starting. please, please, please have investigators work the basketball games. but know you refuse to do it. you refuse to do it. why why? why? ask director tomlin, why am and i want to applaud director so for bringing up about the patrons issue. people get to go to events at night because of using the paratransit debit card at and the subsidized rides so they can afford and go even though they're seniors and disabled to go to a special events and i hope that you will be able to allow this allow them to have

access to the events because we're because if you make it tough for vehicles like ramp taxis to get to certain places, then it's a problem. so again, i applaud scott leon for making arrangements so we can have access during the market street closure so that lighthouse for the blind and the mayor's office of disability. thank you your time is up next. speaker. good afternoon, directors. my name is alex landsberg, research and advocacy director for the san francisco electrical construction industry. i want to say a couple of things. first of all, i tuned in late, so maybe i missed it. but in case you are or in case other viewers and listeners haven't heard, san francisco is going to be hosting the international public transportation association's north american trolley committee next week. trolley bus committee hearing next week in san francisco. and i think we should be proud of and following on

that, i wanted to invite you directors of staff and other members of the public to you, to a question and answer session with andres restrepo and jose valentin restrepo from the universidad pontificia boulevard . diana i worked with them to show how san francisco can quickly electrify more than 200 miles of diesel powered muni routes at a lower cost and with fewer environmental impacts and lower operational costs than currently envisioned by through the battery electric bus program. our report shows how we and we're bringing andre san jose valentin up from medellin to answer questions, have a little reception ahead of the uitp people can rsvp at eventbrite. you can find it in eventbrite or at l, igad dot me. so with periods in there, it's a kind of lead me slash emcee

trolleys. next tuesday, 6:00 at the ibew hall at 55 fillmore thanks. thank you. next speaker. can you hear me now? yes. go ahead. great. david pilpel two points, i think. barry toronto earlier made referee to two people, leaving the mta staff. i understand that one of them is tom maguire, who will be leaving mta soon. i wish him well, although he is not perfect. none of us are. he's a human being, but he, in my opinion, he's been a very decent and honest person at mta and mta could certainly use more decent and honest people. and i think it's a big loss for mta management and for the city. so i wish him well. and if anyone can straighten out bart to san jose, good luck to him on that. on a separate topic , the board of supervisors just

voted to limit remote public comment at its meetings. i think that was a bad policy choice and i hope mta will not follow suit and do so. thanks for listening. thank you. no additional speakers. okay, let's close public comment and move to the next item. directors that places you on item ten consent calendar. these items are considered to be routine and will be acted upon by a single vote unless a member of the board or public wishes to consider an item separately for all speakers. providing public comment, please identify which item number you are speaking to and i will announce that item 10.2 a to establish a shared spaces shared spaces road closure on hay street between gough and octavia streets has been severed from the consent calendar and will be heard separately. item 10.1. go ahead and i'm going to read off requesting the controller to allocate funds and to draw warrants against such funds available or will be available in payment of the following

claims against the sfmta. that's items a and b in the agenda item 10.2 approving various routine parking and traffic modifications and making environmental review findings. items b and c and the agenda and item 10.3 amending transportation code division two, section 801 for permit parking on hyde street between mcallister and grove streets, leavenworth street, between golden gate avenue and mcallister street and larkin street between mcallister and grove streets to support transit improvements along hyde street and the relocation of the heart of the city farmers market to fulton street. that concludes your consent calendar. thank you. secretary silva. i will open now public comment for anyone in the room on our consent calendar minus item 10.2. a seeing none. please open remote at this time. we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two

minutes. moderator first speaker great david paypal again, i assume i can be heard. i just had a brief comment on item 10.3. i don't think it needs to be pulled. i note that page two of the staff report has a section on stakeholder engagement, but really only discusses what stakeholder engagement occurred and does not really summarize the input gleaned from that stakeholder engagement that is not the same as some of the other items that have some different and in some cases more discussion on stakeholder engagement. i think it's important to have that section in staff reports and i think it's important not just to document what stakeholder engagement events occurred and what mta staff broadcast to the stakeholders, but what input was received from stakeholders and much more importantly, what

changes were made to the proposals as a result of that stakeholder engagement. and this applies not just to item 10.3, but throughout to all items today and in the future. thanks for listening. thank you. no additional speakers. okay, we'll close public comment on consent, -10.2 a may i have a motion for my colleagues, please? so moved. thank you. please call the roll on the motion to approve the consent calendar. item 10.2. a severed director. heminger heminger. director henderson. henderson and i director hinsey. i director. so i so i director uk'otoa uk'otoa i director gina i coquina regan. hi egon. i thank you. the consent calendar is approved. okay. please call item 10.2. a item 10.2 a to establish a shared spaces road closure on hay street between gough and octavia streets from saturday, october 21st, 2023 through saturday, october 19, 2024. 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. each

saturday. we have staff here. thank you. good afternoon, chair egan directors. thank you so much for having me this afternoon. my name is monica minich. i'm the program manager of shared spaces and happy to be presenting to you all today on the application we've received and have been working closely with the community on to close the 400 block of hay street and hayes valley as part of the shared spaces post-pandemic program.

um, i prepared a brief presentation on the background of the application and program and what led us to the recommendation, the staff recommendation here in front of you today. so shared spaces is was established over the pandemic. it was intended to make a place outside possible for the neighborhood and business districts and restaurants and businesses to be outside when it wasn't safe to operate indoors through in the form of parklets roadway closures, sidewalk tables and chairs when it really was such a desperate time to be outdoors, it brought people together. it brought communities together. it really was a delight and has continued to be a delight throughout our city. in the summer of 2021, the mayor signed legislation to make shared spaces permanent and here to stay to allow our economy and business districts and small businesses to continue to leverage this and activate our

public spaces, shared spaces for street closures are typically approved by the inter-departmental staff committee of traffic and transportation. this is chaired by sfmta with representation from public works fire department fire. fire department. police entertainment commission. public health. but this application is brought to you today as the board to take action because of the 21 muni route that serves this street and the reroute needed to accommodate this closure, which requires a necessitates the board share shared spaces versus slow streets two programs that started during the pandemic, each very different and i just want to highlight so we're sort of this is covered and intentionally sort of discuss the differences between both programs. shared spaces are intended to be destinations. these are intended to be on commercial corridors. they have sponsors that are responsible

for activating the space and setting it up, and they are recurring, recurring in nature. these are different than blocks that may be closed for a special event shared spaces are recurring slow streets, as we're well aware, are on residential corridors. these are traffic on streets that are slow and accommodate all modes of transportation. it's a really a new sort of framework and typology for people to get from point a to point b, this is a form of mobility. shared spaces. some things we look at, although not required, but most shared spaces throughout the city and from the post-pandemic permanent program. i think we've permitted about over 30 of them are typically on streets without public transit, bike lanes on low volume streets without fire or emergency c or medical facilities and likely few driveways. so there's not a lot of public access needed to be maintained. so not not possible, but additional analysis like

hayes street may be required to confirm feasible city. so now to get into a little bit more of the specifics on hay street, when on the 21 hayes bus line was not operating during the pandemic, the hayes valley neighborhood association and hayes valley merchant council applied for a street closure on the three, four and 500 block for fridays, saturdays and sundays. and they operated in that configuration for, i believe, well over a year. there were some iterations of the permit during that time, notably the end of 2021. it was scaled to be its current form of 400 block only for friday, saturday and sundays due to community opposition and traffic circulation issues. then fast forward. to summer 2022, the 21 hayes came back and we were able to find a way to work with the community to continue to reroute muni to serve and allow the closure to happen every friday, saturday and sunday. and that's

what's been in place since the pandemic program ended in march 2023. so we've been in this transition and hayes valley merchants council submit an application to continue the closure friday, saturday and sundays, fridays for 210 saturdays, sundays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. in the post-pandemic program. and just a high level to orient the three 400 block that we've been speaking and we'll be speaking most about today is that block between gough and octavia, 300 between franklin and gough, and the 500 block is between octavia and laguna. hayes street has been a beloved community space during the pandemic. residents report it loving to walk and gather and be in this space. and some businesses have noted additional foot traffic, foot traffic that has supported their business

during the pandemic time over the course of the permit. the closure has also experiences some challenges. many merchants we've worked with and spoken to would like to see more regular activation of the space sponsors have a lot of responsibility when they close the street. they have to set up the barricades, take them down, activate the space and in inspecting the closure during the period that it was activated ad the applicant was not able to do this reliably. the barricades, for example, were not always set up at the same location, and we were really committed to working closely with them and came up actually with a revised barricade set up within the last year that reduced the ability or the need to have staffing at the tersection. the staffing was needed to move barricades in the event of an emergency, and we worked together as a city team revise the barricades set up to eliminate the staff need that there really having a challenge to do consistently and reliably. unfortunately i think with

inspections, we still were seeing inconsistency in setting up the barricades during that time. other notable things that we've observed and have been reported and many merchants talk about the traffic congestion affecting their businesses, particularly on the 300 block is illustrated here for and the impacts just to general circulation having on their customers and on the business deliveries and pickups needed to support their businesses. lastly we've had a lot of reports on double parking at the intersection as particularly at gough and also on octavia blocking the barricades and really becoming a traffic safety and emergency access issue. we've also received reports from muni about the reroute over the course of the pandemic, about passengers impacted from the new bus stops friday, saturdays and sundays every week. two operators sort of trying to navigate the closure. i understand. and the friday

service operates out of the presidio yard. our trolley bus overhead wires, which are uniquely a little bit less nimble and how they come off wire and have to reroute that is presented just on fridays compared to the service on saturday and sundays. so some of the observations have been reported and identified over the last couple of years. this summer, staff convened stakeholders upon receiving the application to continue in the post pandemic program and met with merchant and neighborhood groups and really tried to all come together. those that oppose and support all in one space to provide a space and a seat at the table to hear concerns and identify sustainable solutions. so while i'm here presenting this today, the recommendations that we bring in front of you are really a representation of our work with the neighborhood and the merchants advocates, the office of small business, the fire department, the mayor's

office, and our recommendations really are a direct result of all of that feedback, like. so to get into now more specifics on what the proposal that was brought forward to the to the group of stakeholders we met with as a result of those conversations, there's a common theme the community loves this space and they want to see it continue in some form. they want it to be activated and well managed, monitored for safety and consistent and reflect the diverse needs of the corridor. so i'll briefly list out all of these and i have some follow up slides to go into them in more detail. but one of the main recommendations was scaling back to a one day only closure, having it be more intentional so we could focus the resources and set it up for success so they can see and build upon that success and that stability and the sponsor being able to activate the space. we were open to the day and try to sort of

feedback. if it was one day with friday feel better saturdays and sundays and ultimately at present suggested a saturday because of the level of activity on that day compared to a sunday, for example. well we'd like to see more regular activation. there are resources for this. the shared spaces program in and of itself has an arts and culture grant that they could apply for to get things like music and art and really enliven the space. and then we also have a host of signage and wayfinding requirements and ideas to bring forth that will hopefully manage the space better, that include includes this new barricade setup that we developed with working with fire department and our engineers that places the barricades out side of the crosswalk instead of inside of the crosswalk. this hopefully eliminates the additional space and sort of invites the double parking, the illegal parking that we were seeing at the intersection. so we propose this at octavia and

at sorry, at gough and octavia with that sort of art shape with a similar thread of thinking, sort of reducing that extra space that was there with the barricade setup during the pandemic. and then the additional wayfinding and loading and signage just to walk through that here on southbound gough, we like to put a no right turn ahead sign up so that it's clear to drivers coming down southbound on gough that hay street is closed and they can circulate through the neighborhood hopefully easier. we've legislated new commercial and passenger loading zones on hayes just south i'm sorry on gough just south of hayes as well as new passenger loading zone in the works on octavia just north of hayes. we'd like to put additional no parking signage on the barricades themselves so that it's clear that shouldn't be happening there and also suggested that businesses put out specific wayfinding signage at the loading zone for their

businesses to support that visibility. again mta provides these barricades and signage to the sponsor at no cost. and they have to store it, maintain it, set it up. but we provide this to all of our permits. so i want to acknowledge that the permit holder, upon receiving the feedback and the supervisor office, felt strongly that the event time should remain the same. we recognize the event is loved by many and some things were not working well and we'd want to see this succeed. and we want to really have this be a reset. so i share this because there's sort of six after that time, there was additional feedback done after the recommendation was shared with the stakeholders. hayes valley did their own membership survey and heard from neighbors who overwhelmingly want to see the street closure continue. we also

partnered with the office of small business, who went door to door on the three, four and 500 block. and i believe spoke to 59 of the 64 merchants. so over 90. and have a really good idea of their needs in addition to the neighbors and while a minority we heard from don't want it at all and some wanted the same the majority 66% wanted a one day or were neutral about a one day. so to show that a little bit more visually see this graph shows again those door to door small office, small business surveys and you can see on the third bar, that's the group, the ten responses that we heard that 16% that wanted to keep friday, saturday and sunday, most of them are on the 400 block. some of them came from the 400 block. so it's clear those right on the block are really are activating and enjoying that space. we also

heard that a lot of businesses did not feel comfortable publicly voicing their concerns. so we've kept their responses anonymous as. in conclusion, this is not about a one day or a three day closure. this is about reset ing and rebuilding that trust in the community and making a process so it's possible that the block can work well and get to 24 over seven. and it wasn't working for some merchants. and that's not a reason to cancel it entirely. we really want an opportunity to grow and expand. on the success in hayes valley and see it thrive. so with that, that concludes my presentation and happy to answer any questions. thank you. thank you. colleagues, do you have questions before we go to public comment at dr. ikuko? just one. i have i have feelings about this, but my clarifying question to you is there have been some talk of asking us to do some kind of study on what it would

take to make this permanent and what's your thoughts on on doing that kind of study? yeah, it's would be amazing to pedestrian personally the space i think that we should leverage upon a pilot type program that shared spaces provides so often we go in with a blank slate go forward with a pilot and then evaluate results. we've had three years to kind of build off of. so i think that that would be a great process that i would love to be part of. and i think to move that forward, we really need to kind of have merchants brought along iron out some of the issues we have been experiencing over the last couple of years to see if it really is a long term viable solution for all the merchants in the corridor. and you said that this is kind of like it feels a little bit like a timeout where you're like, go back to your room and think about what you've done. kind of vibes. how long is this timeout in your mind? like how long do you want to see that the merchants are able to run this

block before they can? it's a good question. i mean, we what's in front of you is a one year permit and that's consists joint with the other shared spaces we brought forward and that's in to provide stability for the community. but we very well could talk about a three month or a six month period. i don't know if that means the permits 3 or 6 months or we just commit to an evaluation time that we are resourcing, are transparent about what the metrics we want to see. i think anything less than that, i think there's a there's a lot of work that goes behind, as you know, to get these going. i probably wouldn't suggest less than three months, but. all right. thank you. thank you. director henderson. thank you, chair. i have a couple questions. just i appreciate the amount of what sounds like a lot of staff work that went into to working with the community to identify a path forward. and i have a question about the timing for this. it's a one year permit. so then what happens? what should we expect in a year's time? um, would it have

to? would it? yeah. what should we expect in a year's time? yeah. all sponsors have to reapply, so they're kind of like parklets as well. they're sort of still temporary activations of the street. so these are, for all intents and purposes, temporary permits. so a sponsor gets permitted for a year, and after that point they can reapply. okay. and then do you have any in terms of considering a permanent programing of the space in this way? is there a process or some sort of way that the community and the staff can commune, skate during that during that year to be able to consider something more permanent or like i'm just curious, how do do we have to wait a year to have that conversation about expanding it potentially? no, thank you for asking so i can provide clarification. no by all means. at a minimum, it can be a year,

but we can entertain at any time. a permit scope can change and we can bring it back to the board and permit if we see after three months, we want to grow or revoke. it's not has to wait for a year. but thanks for asking. got it. thank you. of course. thank you, director. so thank you, monica. really nice presentation. i like all the graphics. it really paints really clear. picture for me to understand what has been going on and also what are the proposed traffic cone layout. i like to what you mentioned about some some of the incident or concern from our fire department. i like to know if can you enlighten us a little bit about about what are the situations that are concerning for public safety? i mean, i'm

really aware of that whole area. i live nearby by all that area and golf street. it's like a major thoroughfare to, you know, everyone just racing down that street and i just want to hear when you mention some of these situation options where, when, when, when folks double park and congested that intersection and what are the concerns about when this street is i just want to hear historically what we have learned. what are the concerns? of course. yes. thank you so 400 block has a is dense with restaurants and businesses that get a lot of activity. if someone is traveling in a vehicle down southbound golf, which as you know, is a big thoroughfare, they get to haze. they can't turn right because the block is closed. so naturally, we're seeing them just get illegally double parked at the barricades. so basically

in the middle of the intersection, not blocking the lane of traffic per se, but there's enough space there that they'll just do the quickest thing possible. and then they go out and get to the restaurant or business on the block and get back to their car. the businesses have told us they don't like that. they they the setup is detrimental to their business. and we've heard from folks like san francisco fire department, what if there's an emergency and there's a blocked car in the way they can't get there, their truck down. so hopefully a new barricade set up and creating additional loading zone just south of hayes will and better signage will kind of alleviate that. but i don't know if you had specific questions broader than that specific activity. me but that is my question is any incident or collectively we had alerts at our agency to flag this is a pretty dangerous kind of way to arrange the street the way we are. like if anyone had been

injured by this or i mean, yeah, no, i'm not aware of an a crash per se, but we do have the fire marshal here in the room and i'd love to invite him up to kind of respond directly to at least from their perspective, what they're seeing for emergency response time. i don't if that's pertinent to your question, but that would be i'd love to have them come up. thank you. and also, i know mary thompson, who i know has to leave at 330, and he's here with the office of small business. she wanted to speak as well at at some point when that's relevant and important. thank you. good afternoon, chair egan. directors ken coughlin, your fire marshal. i want to answer your question. i see where you're going with that. not physical instance, but the problem is that hay street and that block is a route for our battalion chiefs and sometimes our engines that cross town. so we have webster,

webster and almost here we have a firehouse and we have another one at oak and franklin, and we have battalion chiefs who run a section of town. and every time you have a fire in building smoke, call, building alarm, they have to respond one way or another. and unfortunately, the their response area is not nice little blocks. it's kind of it's interesting. it's been that way for a long time. anyway, as we this closure, which monica didn't mention, actually has a 20 foot access lane down the center. okay. because there are still buildings. there are there are still restaurants there. we still have to respond, whether it be a medical or a fire, more likely a medical call. so the rearrangement of the cones was to allow the fire department to get through there without actually having a monitor to move the cones, because we noticed that was a problem. specifically, it would be those cars that were double parked for food pickup deliveries that the chief the engines, the trucks tried to get through. and all of a sudden there's a car there and

they just couldn't get through. so that's the that's more of the type of incidents we ran into and that's why we worked together with sfmta to reconfigure the cones, to bring them out. so we don't have that legal parking at the intersection and blocking the crosswalk. so what you said, not specific, harmed anybody more of a delay. the harm would be have to be analyzed afterwards. if somebody didn't get there on time. thank you. i really appreciate your your expertise and what is the traffic cone look like now? what does it look like now? yes the way the cones are, they will they type to barricade? is that the type three barricades at the end? that's what the larger ones with the slats. and then they have just simple cones in there. what we've asked and worked with is to still use the type three barricades. but space the cones a little bit larger so we can still get through without running them over. if you run them over the wrong way, then they get stuck on the wheel well

. now you got more of a bigger problem. you're going to ruin a million dollar fire engine. so the thing is, the idea is to have quick access directly through the lane without and then also some cooperation with the operator side of the merchants. right. well the permit says you cannot put anything permanent in that space. we're not worried about people walking in the street. they tend to move out of the way when you have a big red fire engine making lots of noise and coming down at you. so that's not the problem. it's the it's keeping the physical items out of the street tables and barricades and things like that. i believe the permit actually even calls for cones to mark down the street to say this is how far you can come out, you know, put tables and chairs in the parking place and even a little bit wider. but leave this area clear. so you may have heard of instances where we've driven down the street. that's what it's for. we are we do use it as a response route. we have used it to get from one side of town to the other. as you know, oak street fell street. they've gotten quite busier over the years as some type of reconfiguration. so hayes is an important cross town pathway for us. okay. thank you. okay. thank

you. colleagues, i'd like to ask marianne thompson from office of small business to address the board so she has to leave at 330. thank you. board members. thank you, monica. thank you. so in the last few months, the office of small business has engaged very strongly with sfmta. it's important for us that the voice of small businesses be heard, and this has really been a great process in many ways. what sfmta did was they enabled us to bring many voices to the table. those who were unheard, unseen in merchants association actions that sfmta did not know existed. i want to applaud sfmta and the mayor's office for bringing everyone together in a really, really safe space and having these great conversations. for

those of you who don't know me and my work, i have actually been with the office of economic and workforce development for over ten years. open space activations is at the heart and soul of what i do every day. besides engaging small businesses, many of you have been to a lot of my activate sessions and didn't even know it . hayes valley. that's when your work is good. hayes valley is at the heart of this is deep to me because when i go to hayes valley and when i get there, by the way, i am a muni person. i don't have a car. so when i'm there and i see that space, i want to see it activated. and i want to see it be brilliant and i want it to be the shining star of the city. we have work to do to get it there. and i think it's really, really important that we say that out loud. we have work to do to get it to be a shining star. and i and i

really, again, want to thank monica and her team for listening to people. i also want to point something out because i've been here since 1:00 and a lot of small businesses have been here since 1:00. and this is something for all of us to think about. the business that are here are sole proprietors. some of them may have had to close their doors to come here today, having people go through public comment for an item that impacts small businesses. let's rethink how we do this and let's really rethink how we treat our small businesses. and again, i really want to emphasize this because it did come up in our survey. people were afraid to come forward and speak about this closure because they felt at times they would be bullied or treated unfairly. and so i want to make sure at the conclusion of this, the voices from the small businesses that you hear today, they can walk away feeling safe and heard. and that's all we ask for. that's it. thank you. thank you.

director henzi, i believe you had your hand up. i did this sort of. this is a question for monica, but it sort of builds on what miss thompson just touched on. do we have typically, um, evaluate evaluation metrics and sort of reporting requirements for storm surge spaces, street closures. um, and if we don't, um, have you thought of evaluation, evaluation metrics possibly for this one, like the number of activations they have, the number of, i don't know, people that you use it on comparing on what days, etcetera, and the such. um so

could you touch on evaluation of the closure as we consider this, as we before public comment. yes thank you. director henzi have thought about it. i think is a wonderful idea in the effort of transparency and decision making . it is not easy to develop metrics for something like this. how do you it's such like a soulful art and sense of being sort of can you establish a number? is the number of people a certain amount then that is a success? is it the quality of the event and the activation? and so i don't say that as an excuse. i think it is definitely something i would like to explore. we have a lot of evaluation programs here at the sfmta and people that think a lot about this and i would love to consult them and people that work with small businesses so that we can establish that. but it is we would want to do it thoughtfully so that we are right. it is measurable. yeah, it is a hard it is a hard thing

to measure, but yeah. okay thank you. manager. that was it. okay. thank you. director henzi colleagues, i'd like to open it to public comment. unless there's anything else pressing right now. okay. please. speakers in the room on the hayes street. shared spaces. i do have some speaker cards. andrew andrew singer. jennifer laszlo barnett. trzcinski stacy randecker. afternoon board. barnett brzezinski. district two frequent visitor of hayes valley . if i could recap a little bit of the presentation we just saw the closure and the area there in hayes valley on hayes street is so popular for people double parked to try to get into the area even more than they already can with with legal parking. so if there is a moment of peace and quiet on the street, aka it hasn't been activated, that's a permit violation because drivers

are behaving badly and violating the barricade. we're going to remove the barricade and let them in more. as an example of what's going on around the city. and these are all incidents that happened in the last week and a half. a car drove off the road and onto a building at filbert and fillmore, causing a gas leak in building damage and making the fire department respond. a driver committed a hit and run in the bayview, hitting a car which then hit a muni vehicle, which i'm sure a lot of you are aware of. a car recently veered off the road on divisadero and smashed into a bus shelter between page and haight, a store in union square was ramrodded so-called by burglars who drive a car into the building in order to then steal from it. and there was a 100 mile an hour chase coming up the peninsula that ended right at the freeway exit where hayes valley begins. this is the type of thing that we are inviting onto our streets as a default when any other more higher purpose, pedestrian friendly closure, more business

activity, more just neighbors getting to know their neighbors. this is considered the aberration. you have to apply for a permit for this. i strongly encourage you to please, please, please consider sending this back to the mta in encouraging them that any increase in vehicle lane mile access is a contravention of transit first policy and the climate goals the mta has and also ask a question why are we the only city going backwards on this nearly every city in the bay area and even around the world in the country is expanding pedestrian access be street in san mateo, castro street in mountain view. one of the speakers earlier mentioned san jose. so we need to do more of this within san francisco. thank you. thank you. thank you. next speaker. hi i'm jennifer laska, the president of the hayes valley neighborhood association. and i pulled the original permit three years ago and have been worked working tirelessly with the merchants on this as you've heard over and over again, this closure is very beloved by the community. the immediate community. and i hear

from people who say that they come from all over the city to come, come and enjoy this space on the weekends. so that brings more business to our our small businesses in hayes valley. i want to note that the merchants actually applied for a three day closure. what you're seeing in front of you is a one day closure that was recommended by sfmta staff. that is not what we applied for. we still have not heard a good reason why a three day closure can't continue. we've heard issues about the barricades. there's a solution for that. that's something that we totally agree with should be done. and we've also heard difficult days about rerouting the bus for three days a week. but no one's been able to explain to me why that really is a difficulty. and we've seen it done successfully for over a year now. so i really need to understand why that would be a barrier to continue ing this three day closure. i guess we have now heard the concerns of

the fire department, but it sounds like the barricade reconfiguration will help with those. and i think the additional signage will also improve some of the traffic issues. we'd love to work on this as a permanent solution because there is an easy way to have two lanes heading westbound on hayes turn left onto gough and really improve that traffic flow full time. so in summary, i really urge approving the three day closure not just the one day closure that's in front of you today. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. hi, my name is andrew signer. i've been living in the city for 20 years. i've been in hayes valley for seven at the beginning of the pandemic, a large group of volunteers, myself included, spent every friday and saturday and sunday stationed at intersections along the merchant corridor to get the shared spaces program off the ground. three years later, i believe

it's been a shining example of what's enabled our neighborhood not only to survive the pandemic, but but thrive. and that includes probably our busiest time friday night all the way through sunday. recently, the program has been the future has been a little bit uncertain that was definitely a wake up call for myself and a lot of folks in the neighborhood. and i created a website free hayes.org along with the petition asking not only to continue the three day program but to find a way to get to a permanent pedestrianized hayes street. since september, 1200 people have signed it. there's enormous enthusiasm around this in our community. i also think there's a lot of capacity to help the sponsor make this a successful program. so with that in mind, i have two requests for you all. one, please amend the agenda item to allow us to continue this three day program that we've had for three years. and two, please

instruct mta staff to design a process to a what it looks like to get to a fully pedestrianized street. and finally, i just want to thank you for all your work, particularly mta staff and folks in the mayor's office and folks in our supervisor's office. there's tons of work going into this, so thank you so much. thank you. next speaker, please. good afternoon. my name is stephen breach and i urge you to not i urge you to not reduce the hayes valley shared spaces program from three days a week to just nine hours on saturdays. furthermore i urge you to direct staff to help the hayes valley merchant council accommodate the owners requirements that are being placed on them by the fire department and the sfmta staff excuse me, to renew their permit and maintain the program. hayes valley shared spaces program has been an economic lifeline for merchants on hayes for the past three years and has helped revitalize the entire neighborhood by expanding patricia's green and connecting it to the local businesses on hayes street. once again, the fire department is fighting the

shared spaces program on the grounds that closing the street to vehicles with traffic cones impedes their emergency response times. while i analyze six years of vehicle crashes on hayes street and the fire department's response times to 355 emergency calls that have been there over the past six years. and i found this at least four of the vehicle crashes on hayes street on the 3405 hundred blocks could have been prevented if the program was not scaled back in 2021. an and if it actually had been extended to 2018 when we should have actually started doing this earlier. furthermore, the shared spaces program has not had an impact on emergency response times by station 36, which is three blocks away, and which services all 911 calls to the area. the two minutes is not enough time to go into the specifics, but you should have received a deluge of emails yesterday that link to my data analysis, which hopefully you've had a chance to review and i'm happy to follow up with any answers or any questions you may have. so the takeaway here is that the hayes valley shared

spaces program expands a critical, pro-business, safe, open space simply by restricting unnecessary cut-through traffic and does not have a negative impact on the on the fire department's emergency response times. furthermore reducing the program from three days to one flies in the face of our city's climate action plan, or vision zero. and our transit first goals. please do not reduce the footprint of this program and direct staff to help the hayes valley merchant council administer and expand it. thank you. thank you for your comments. next speaker, please. hi, maggie. crystal i own a hayes street facing business. i'm also a resident in hayes valley, which means that i can actually walk to work. i've been reflecting this last week on the terrible events that we've probably all been reflecting on, and it's a bit ironic that we're squabbling over a one block patch of asphalt. i'm supporting. i'm one of the 66% that supports the modifications proposed by sfmta, and i'm super hopeful that this reset any

reset will reframe the conversation and allow for an opportunity for all of us to participate in a really dynamic and wonderful, active version of 400. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. hi, stacy randecker. this all feels oddly familiar to the active communities program, the one where we are spending a year to go out and ask people how they feel or the valencia pilot where we're doing this weird thing and checking it out to see how things go for a year. when are we going to have the thing that is like bold and like is where we should be going? we're asking people like, we're going to scale back this thing that's awesome and we're going to and we have to like, you know, activate it and do all this stuff and barriers up and barriers down. and it is too

much. how about 24 over seven pedestrian ization of three blocks? that's your pilot. that's the thing. that's what we all pour our efforts into. so all the energy that's going into, well, what do you think and how would this work? and blah, blah, blah. no actually do it. go there and see what does the fire department need when we set it up this way, what do the merchants need to get access, etcetera? what do the residents feel and it shouldn't have to be this special, like, oh, we've got to jazz it up and whatever. it's just like the bike to roll work or school day for everybody. it's like it shouldn't be a special event. it should be every day that there are places you can go that is quiet or that you can get a bite to eat. you can gather with your friends. there's extra space there is these islands should be throughout the city. we should make it so that everybody can get everywhere they need to go without relying on a car or more of this. please expand this. don't contract it. expand this

and multiply it. let's go after i want clement and 24th street to thanks. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. good afternoon, director tomlin and board. i'm lloyd silverstein . i'm the founder of the hayes valley merchants council and we currently hold the permit for the shared streets program. i also want to mention i'm a third generation owner of the oldest optical store in san francisco, which got its start just a few blocks from here in 1907. i hope you'll indulge me if i go over my two minutes, but there's been a lot going on here and i really want to be able to address everything. hayes valley was hit especially hard by the pandemic. within six months, one out of every three businesses had closed for no other commercial corridor in the city was hit this hard. yet we've come back faster and stronger than any of them. we are fully leased. take a look at chestnut union fillmore. you'll see dozens of for lease signs. the reason that hayes valley is thriving is

simple. for much of the pandemic. i and others that you've heard from today spent our weekends touring hayes valley with brokers and potential new tenants. what they saw here and what they saw. nowhere else was activity. people out in the streets, in our public spaces, in other words, customers for our small businesses. this is just part of the value of shared streets. our merchants council is democratic by nature. we advocate for the greater good of all merchants. we also espouse that our neighbors successes and important as our own and the speaking with one loud voice that represents the majority of our businesses is in the best interests of our community. in the case of shared streets, that voice is loud and clear. keep our existing shared streets program. this is not anecdotal. this is based on our unbiased online survey sent to 175 businesses in our community. it was completely transparent and available for all respondents to view. i will say for a moment here that the one mta conducted was biased. it only asked, are you in favor of a saturday? only it didn't say. are you in favor of friday? only sunday, only all days. so it was very biased and

obviously the results were biased to even though we were told by mta that our survey was not necessary, we felt that it was a way to get accurate census on the issue. our survey was reviewed by mta and the staff before sending in all data, both raw and summarized, was sent back to them. the survey showed overwhelming support for the existing schedule and some people wanted to extend it. when our shared streets renewal came before the escort in march, we were surprised to hear that there were concerns from sfpd mta, as well as stakeholders outside the sheriff's. thank you for your comments. that is your time and we have to be equitable with all speakers. thank you for being here. next speaker, please can i put this in the record for anybody to see? sure. next speaker please go ahead and approach the podium. hi. hi. this is my first time. mike gallagher i'm not going to speak as eloquently as everyone else, but i'd like it to remain the same as it was and hopefully close for good. you don't need to activate a park. we can look

at a bunch of cities around the world that are way ahead of us and i guess we always talk about wanting to be a world class city, but it only takes trips elsewhere to see that it looks like we're living 30 years in the past and people need to have more space outside to hang out and this is just it's clear that somebody wants this close because as it was tried to be done behind closed doors, pretty sure we know who that is. the mayor doesn't seem to like this stuff. and it's time that we do bold things and not just mess around and make the merchants do all this stuff. just let just you know, do your job. like build this stuff out like they do in dutch cities. i mean, this is a it's a joke. i've been here for over ten years and nothing changes. and it's just do something bold. we saw in the pandemic what this city could be . i mean, when it was so quiet, when there was just so much less and we got all these great programs and now every single

time i look, it's getting scaled back and scaled back and scaled back. we're not growing anything. we're just scaling, scaling, scaling the slow streets, little chips here like you can have through traffic. all this little, little things just chip away at it, chip away at it so that it doesn't work so that it can be stopped. it's pretty clear that that's what people want to happen. that's all i have to say. okay. thanks for your comments. next speaker, please. i apologize. it couldn't be here at one because i was on a surgery table. it's very interesting to hear everything today. i i've owned a business on hayes street for 20 years. i've lived on grove street for 15 years. i am the perfect person to represent the fact that all of these huge successes that they're talking about aren't successes in any way, shape or form. the information they're based off, including lloyd's survey, biased, manipulative in the tremendous

victories that you guys are saying are nonexistent as far as i can see by pure stakeholder, as the people who've done the work, the heavy lifting on hayes street for the past several decades, i want to just say i'm sitting in here. i just realized the politicization of everything and there's a necessary evil called politics. and i see you guys working. i have a business on hayes street, not street, not a hayes shared street. my business is on a street where 81% of my customers drive their car to that street. it's gotten incredibly difficult. i understand. i can look at what the city has done to abide by the rules of the biking community. the manipulations that's going on. i get it. i'd like to be a progressive city, too, but we're also a city that's founded on streets that the fire trucks have to go down on. and all of the successes that i've been hearing about today, i'm going to tell you,

please, they aren't as great as you guys think they are. and if my business for 81% of the people i'm sorry, i'm going to leave with this with you guys, 70% of the people who come to my store visit other stores in hayes valley. the congestion in on laguna and octavio for the byproducts of all these things, a nightmare. i have traffic jams where i've never had traffic jams before. i have people honking their cars at all times when it never existed. so i don't even want the word i hate the word activation right now. i apologize. maybe i'm old school. no activation. i'm not with maggie. i don't agree with the one day. thank you. that's your time. thank you very much. does anybody want this like lloyd? i can leave that for you guys. this is a 140 customers who are real people. i'll go ahead and leave it. that's fine. next speaker, please. hi. good afternoon, directors. zach lipton, first, i'll just say i'm sad to hear the news from director uchitelle. thanks for all your work here and i know

this is far from the end of your efforts to help build the thriving and more livable city. one of those efforts is, of course, the side street shared space. and i'm disappointed with this proposal to reduce the successful and popular shared space program. i hope we can continue the friday through sunday shared spaces or at least just continue this item for a bit while these issues continue to be worked out. but i don't just want to focus on the number of days i hope the agency can work more to support the merchants in the neighborhood to make the shared space a success and work towards a future permanent, 24/7. hayes plaza. i'm honestly confused why we're framing this as a compliance with permit terms issue and not a what do we need to do to help make hayes street the best place it can be? one hayes street has been a sewer of double parking for decades, so why only now are we punishing merchants by curtailing the shared space? because we suddenly expect them to be responsible for parking enforcement? why do we keep creating impediments instead of building on really one of the most popular successes of the

last few years? when is the last time you've ever sat in this room and heard a near unanimous parade of merchants praising an mta program anywhere in the city ? this this program has near-unanimous support from merchants on the 400 block of hayes that are directly affected . and it's one of our city's most walkable and transit rich commercial areas. and for those who need to drive, there's a 600 space mta owned parking garage around the corner for everyone. obviously, as you've heard, the shared space is not perfect, but instead of retreating, which will do nothing to address those concerns, we can work harder to make the shared space work better and live up to the values that we talk so much about. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. hi. board members. luke bornheimer here. i urge you to amend the item today to keep the three day closure intact. it's wildly successful. it should continue. i also urge

you to direct staff to work towards a 24 over seven pedestrian ization of this block of hayes street because it's so successful. many of the concerns about the closure have to do with barricades being moved and put back and where they go. there's a great solution for that. we've done it on a car free jfk. you make it 24 over seven and then you can install barriers that just stay there and you can actually engineer them, work with the fire department to make them work great. you can also install furniture, street furniture in the street and activate the street on car free jfk. we don't have concerts every day. we have some furniture out there and it's activated by just people coming. we don't need to throw parties on every single car free street in the city, every single day at every single hour. you can install furniture tables shade just allow people to come to the space. so i urge you to amend this to make it a three day closure. but i urge you to go further and direct staff to work towards making it a 24 over

seven, pile it, whatever we want to call it. we should be working towards that as a city. we know the crises we face. we know what our policies, our goals say. we know what we talk about in press releases or press conferences is we can actually act to fulfill some of those things that we talk about doing right here. this is a very tangible way to do it. thank you. thank you. good afternoon. my name is pete wilson and i am a resident of district five western addition and something somebody said earlier today about other countries really made me think because as somebody who lived in italy, 20 or 30 years ago and rode my bicycle and was hit several times on the city streets and then went back a year ago and was just amazed at the little lanes that they have and how what a great job they've done. and how much fun it is visiting places over there where you do have city sidewalk streets, not pedestrian streets.

and so i definitely would support that every day. and i like the people who are saying 24 over seven, seven days a week. i would also like to see as a somebody who is certified as a trolley bus operator, i would love to see the 21 hayes trolley bus going downtown, actually going somewhere and providing for not only the tourists. i used to work in the tourism industry, but for the residents and to bring more people to hayes valley because it goes as far as hyde. we'd like to see it go all the way downtown and to say that we need diesel busses or electric busses to come in on the weekend is not true. right now, the 31 balboa is going off wires. it could go all the way to caltrans on wires. it drives under the wires for 1.1 miles, and they're electrified wires and they're choosing not to use them. and trolley busses use 30% less power than a than battery busses. let's remember the mining of the lithium and all

that other stuff, folks. so let's bring back the trolley bus. we can use it seven days a week and there's operators who love driving those. and thank you for your time. thank you for sharing your perspective with any other speakers in the room. seeing none. please open the remote comment at this time. we'll move to remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue each speaker will have two minutes. moderator for speaker, good afternoon, this is barry taranto. i was surprised as well to see that you cut down the proposal from 3 to 1 day. i think hayes valley does need the help by having the street closure for the business, but there has to be some mitigation measures to alleviate some of the issues that are created by the by that block closure. excuse me. um, first, you need

to have enough vacant space for our taxis and delivery cars to pull over and not block the intersection or not block the not double parked on golf street . you also need to also have some space on golf east of the intersection, not golf city. hayes so because what happens is that light that that left turn arrow is not long enough and so you have cars stacked up at that left turn and you have cars double parked in the right lane. so what do you do? you so there's a problem there. so i think it's important to actually put up permanent signage saying on this day during certain hours it's a towaway zone. so therefore, when someone gets their car towed because it's a white zone during that time period, then they're not surprised. and i think it's important to enforce it. unfortunately, you don't have

pco's at night enforcing the no parking zones. so this is something you have to rectify and maybe make that arrow a little bit longer. so that so therefore, the cars don't stack up to that left lane and so i think it's important to may even add another day to this. and the last thing is that the grove street exit from the performing arts garage also creates a problem when the symphony or another event breaks before your 10:00. like a lot of the time, it ends at 930. thank you. so that's another time is up next. speaker. conservatoire minor. one concern i have is what access to close

streets will the aged and disabled have now these are long these can be long blocks and physically impaired would have a difficult time patronizing business. so you really have to think it over as far as patronage goes aged and disabled . also byproducts services on this on this street and you're actually shutting down your revenue and i'm concerned about that. basically about access for everyone in the city. and you cannot favor one population over another. it should be open for business for everyone. and what's going to happen during the winter? oh, it's going to be great to be in the open air during the summer. what about

the winter when it gets cold? so basically businesses might be freezing themselves out of revenue. and i think everyone loses in the process. so i think this over very carefully and make accommodations for everyone and be flexible to adapt to all, challenge changes. thank you. thank you. next speaker. good afternoon. this is mitch records with the hayes valley small business association and hayes valley safe. we want to underscore that throughout the entirety of the street closure on hayes. we've been advocating for a fair and equitable process . our concern has always been that that process for a program that was rolled out as a temporary during a pandemic was never clearly defined. now that we've been part of the process, we support the recommendations

set forth for this pilot by sfmta. we also hope that you will not be dissuaded by others who have been trying to change the narrative for an initiative that has impacted small business operators and residents not always favorably, who have spoken up over the last couple of years with respect to their concerns evolving around scheduling traffic issues, signage and lack of activation. the current permit conditions at face value seemingly try to address these. so let's try it and reassess. i also want to express concern about the inability of small business operators to speak up and share their stance when it has become evident that there is another agenda being driven here which has hindered the much needed conversations about how to improve the vision of transit. first, in hayes valley, we would like to see the same synergy applied to optimizing the many open spaces in hayes valley and the western addition to try to really capitalize on the big vision we once had with the

removal of the freeway. as it stands now, we have serious traffic issues. we have serious public safety issues, all of which we've been advocating for the last few years. all the focus has been on this one. block thank you. thank you. no additional callers. okay colleagues, the item is before you are there, comments, questions. director kahina, please. thank you, chair, and thank you to everyone, all the members of the public and the business community that came out to give public comment on this item. um colleagues, i do see this this particular proposal as a way to formalize a pandemic era program. and that alone has tons of growing pains to it, right? like we're trying to figure out how something where the economy was shut down, all activities were shut down, was quite successful for a lot of folks. a lifeline for a lot of folks. and how we can bring that back and formalize it with our

new activities with all our different systems up and running. so i know this is going to feel painful for a lot of folks for some time as we figure out how to make this work. now with everything active again, um, i do see the proposal before us laying the foundation for something bold. i don't see it closing the door to that and it gives us about a year to regroup and really understand how to rightsize a solution here. i'm really grateful that staff worked with the office of small business. i think that was a very smart move, but also a very intentional move that i think we need to do more of in future projects as we work in commercial corridors. i've worked with mary anne thompson before when i did my work at the excelsior action group, and so i understand and a lot of the work that she does and the integrity with which she does that work. and so i was really grateful to see that she was part of this project and that she was part of the surveying process and truly want to thank monica for all the

work that you've done to shepherd this this project. i did have a few clarifying questions, though, on the proposal itself. um, you mentioned that that during the three day closure we rerouted the 21 right? i wanted to just get your sense, if there are any material changes in ridership during that time, if the closure affected ridership on the 21 and if in this proposal were mitigating some of those challenges. so a great question. director unfortunately, i don't know. i don't have that information readily available, but can easily pull that the metrics and what i heard mostly from the working closely with the transit team were around reported passenger confusion about where to find those bus on those three days because for example friday is 4 to 10 part of the day part not and also the operator some of the operator complaints and confusion about

where they need to be when. but the ridership number i don't have. and so i think as we're evaluating this permit, that would be something i'd definitely be interested in understand more. i anticipate we're going to see this item again in a year's time. so it would be lovely to have that type of information available. um, additionally, getting the operators perspective to i think that would be wonderful to also have to understand, you know, is it has it been easy to navigate any changes there? and as it pertains to the barricades, you know, i've thrown a few festivals myself. i've thrown a few events myself and i've gone through the process and it's quite intensive. and you have all these folks there from all these different departments weighing in on on a street closure for one day. and so i imagine we had that sort of level of inspection for this particular for closure in this permit process. and i'm so great that fire was part of this and

they were part of the equation here. who was responsible for setting up the barricades? i understand we're purchasing the barricades and we're setting that up, which is quite generous because it's got permit holders have to pay that fee themselves and they have to pay fees for all the signage and all that stuff. so it seems like we're we're doing our good faith effort and supporting this by also doing that. but who is responsible for setting up those barricades? the sponsor for? yeah, thank you for asking that. to clarify for every shared space street closure it is the sponsor the permittees responsible city to store and set up and take down so store the barricades throughout the year they get one set of barricades and put them out so we make sure our job, in addition to providing the barricades, is to educate them. we hornbostel our amazing engineer is here. he works on all these renderings and does this assessment for us. he'll draw up the barricade schema, get on the phone with sponsors, talk about them, talk about the spacing, why we need them. we've often gone out in person and marked up maybe the crosswalk for them, but ultimately they

have to set it up every day and take it down every day and. if this was an issue with a three day closure, just wanted to get a sense from from the team on what we're going to do to ensure that this is being set up in a compliant way and how we're working with the permit holder to ensure that they're compliant with that piece. yeah. um i think like i mentioned, the education the most we could do up front. so there's, there's this technical information so that they understand it. so there's no discrepancy from the get go. but ultimately, yeah, we don't have bandwidth. we are not going out every week. we are surveying, we are out on the ground all the time. i've gone out there, jared has gone out there. the fire marshal and we'll take photos and we can like share that back with them. sort of like, hey, this is the

tweak needed. and we don't have an official enforcement team at the mta to do that. it kind of has been on our own time, but i think that's something else i can think of is sort of as they're rolling it out to be kind of monitoring and reporting, but ultimately, again, it is a lot of the responsibility that these sponsors are taking on when they're applying for a permit. and so if in the event the permit holder does not comply with that, what do we do then? or how do we learn about it and what do we do then? yeah, this is new territory for shared spaces because they are recurring. my understanding for escort is special event when there are compliance issues, it's more reflected on when a sponsor comes back the next year. kind of like maybe are we permitting them again? so we've developed revocation thresholds and we can and we will iron that out more for transparency and working with the sponsors. we haven't had to use that yet, but having a documentation of, ah, you not closing the street when

you said you could, that's one problem, like having i'm permitted for fridays, but some fridays i'm not and some fridays i am. so having that sort of when we will on what grounds and how we would communicate at first communicate verbally and then you're on. you can be revoked. we have the ability as mta to revoke a permit. so we want to make sure that that is kind of that process is documented so we can do that. it's just a matter of how and we haven't had to do that yet, but we're still sort of new and rolling out the shared spaces program. we weren't doing much of that type of enforcement during the pandemic as we were more lenient. yeah, i would definitely say like as we as we start formalizing this process more, i think it would be helpful for us to understand what what sort of compliance measures we have and what sort of enforcement measures we have. so that we could support more projects like this and make sure folks are given the proper guidance and the tools to succeed and see these succeed. right so that's the hope. and

lastly, this is more for jeff, but i did want to acknowledge a letter that we received from supervisor preston's office and hoping that you could address some of the recommendations that were in that. and i'll point them out. so one of them, i think, was was already addressed by by members of the public. but also with your presentation, monica, of why a restoration of three day weekend closure to private vehicles. it would be challenging at this point. so i think you've addressed that pretty well. but understanding the time sensitive of this proposal, there was a request to entertain an idea of continuing the item until december to give the community an opportunity to address outstanding issues. and so i just want to get a context of is there a time sensitivity in deciding this now, now and have we do we think within a month's time we would make any

material changes to the project at with more outreach and more engagement with folks? so. well, first of all, the timing issue is just that the previous permit has long since expired. and we need to formalize the permit for a whole variety of reasons, including liability. what is clear from all the engagement that we've done is there's near universal agreement on the desired outcome. the only question is how do we best get there? the staff recommendation is very clear that the best way to achieve success, to achieve the desired outcome of a vibrant, car free, active street is to temporarily shrink the number of days we work with the community in order to figure out how to one, comply with the rules of the permit to figure out activation and three continue engaging with community and getting support from merchants and then expand from there. once we're able to achieve success. so that's that is our primary reason in terms

of the desired outcome. um, staff and supervisor preston's office are in agreement and i think generally what we've heard from the community is, is mostly agreement about the goal that we're trying to get to where there's disagreement is on how to get to the goal and delaying this item simply delays our ability to work with the community to get to the goal. we've we've heard loud and clear the various voices. thank you, jeff. colleagues, are there other questions? okay, director henzi, i see you. go ahead. um, director kikina actually, actually only asked my questions. i was curious if these permits were revocable and how we were measuring compliance with the, the, the, the, the to

configure them weighing out configurations. i did want to and this is mostly for my colleagues i did want to and i think maybe director uchitel has a proposal that he might want to propose as a compromise. i did want to say i know director kino was mentioning a year, but i didn't want to maybe consider one, maybe director you could deal gives his proposal well, maybe that we shorten the permit , permit duration and add some evaluation metrics. but i'll let director uchitel maybe toss out his proposal and then i'll add to see what he might have. yeah okay. director uchitel, please. i feel like what is the sports metaphor? a year? what did you give me an alley oop? okay um,

clearly not my strong suit. it's that thing where you pass the ball and then the person puts it in the. the basket. i'm going to keep my comments. just the hayes valley and the hayes valley. shared space. yes, i have spoken to a lot of merchants on this corridor and it's a corridor i'm very familiar with. and i know that this has been really tough. monica, also alex sweetened the mayor's office. marianne i think my greatest disappointment with this is that it got to this point where it's become so divisive and i know a thing or two about this, this getting divisive and it's the hardest thing too, because like the small business is ecosystem of owners. like we're all working so hard to keep our businesses open. and for and honestly, the pandemic was a moment where that really brought us a lot of us together to kind of support each

other. and love each other and survive and i've seen in the post pandemic period as as we try to continue to survive that unity and that that kind of togetherness really starting to splinter, it makes me sad from a very tactical perspective. i think there should be a compromise from just reading through the survey results that we gathered. it seems like a fair bit of merchants on the block like it and merchants on the either other block don't like it so much. not so surprising when we've asked them to go from it sounds like about 30 hours to something like 9 or 10 hours. i'll tell you what, my suggestion is, colleagues, that we can talk about, but i'll just take a step back and say one of the fatal flaws i think about this on hay street is, is how temporary it actually feels. and we're basically asking communities to reorient themselves around a street in

different ways on a weekly basis. so a couple of days a week you can drive through a couple days a week, you can't. and it actually is really hard to build community in a space that's quite so temporary. so i think i understand why other merchants and folks who are getting out of the symphony and people in around are annoyed and frustrated and confused. and part of it is because, as you know, our streets are also community spaces. and when we don't have any reliable city of what they're going to look and feel like, it creates a lot of frustration. an and so i get that. so i do think that if we're going to start if we're going to be closing streets and opening them up for businesses and other uses, we need to choose some streets. we do need to make them permanent. we need to actually sfmta and the city needs to invest in them and make them awesome or else they're just going to be like cones in the street and merchants trying to book deejays and making it cool, which honestly is not really what we're good at. so i do think we need to pick a lane pun intended and we need to try

to show how we can make a couple of these spaces really special. well, and putting cones up a couple times a week is not going to cut it. so i think we should meet in the middle for my understanding, they had a friday night closure an all day saturday, and all day sunday. i know it's inconven decent for our busses, but i think we should bring back friday night, which is like five hours. that's 15 hours. they used to have 30. to me, it seems like a fair compromise to kind of meet them in the middle. i also think that we should study what would it would take, how much money it would take, how much time it would take and how our agency could take this one block back street and make it something different than what it is now, and work with the fire department to think about a solution that feels good with everyone. so i think we should put our money where our mouth is . study what it would be like to make one block of hay street into a permanent pedestrianized space. and i think we should add

back friday night and take away sunday night in terms of the timing of the permit for this, i think it's a very i can imagine for hayes valley, for any merchants association, it's a lot to go through the approval process for this. so i wouldn't actually advocate for reducing the time of the permit. but i do think and i'm sure, monica, you'll be in communication with them where the kind of checking in on how things are going. we shouldn't wait a year to do that, right? we should be checking in with them more regularly and trying to be a partner to them. in terms of how it's actually going and how we can be helpful. so that's my proposal. it seems fair, kind of meet them in the middle. i've heard that friday night was very good for them from a small business perspective. as we know, friday nights is a different vibe than weekend days. it brings out different kinds of folks and there's a lot of restaurants in and around this block. i'll second that. i i was going to suggest six months, but directory you could

tell obviously has much, much more background on what it takes to secure one of these permits. so i'm happy with the year. as long as that maybe in a memo to us you know something back to us via memo in about six months just sort of check in on on on how things are going okay say something here. um, i really like this idea, but then i also think that this is this is the first time i actually got to see the small businesses representation and also the fire department representation here in my, my in my tenure working or volunteering at city hall. it really shows shows that there's also a gentleman actually just got out of the operation desk

and just to show up. these folks do have i'm myself a small business. i understand like every second count and you make your choice. why you are aware or you are that day to spend your 24 hours and really appreciate the study. and then this is not about not wanting share streets or not wanting climate, you know, saving the world, saving the earth. you know, we are all in the same focus here. we want this. we want all these amazing things on our street. this is about about, in my understanding, hearing from all sides. i'm also really aware of that. the side that actually has lesser voice are the one that actually drown ing. they can't. when you drown, you can't even speak. so it is really about the when we're getting into the pandemic, it is

what i seen is like we all have to improvise and just do something where to get everyone happier and make things happen when normally we actually would do something a little bit more and try to figure out a plan and a policy and accountability and how we actually enforce certain situation and if that actually has had life and safety hazard or concern. right? so but we don't we don't have the luxury back then. we didn't do that. and this is a really great time to learn. and how to adapt and different neighborhood is different because the dynamic is different. so i really appreciate the our staff also know the fire department, the small businesses, and also our mayor's office really reach out to talk to everyone on not just the few representation representative of i'm really aware of the people that actually has less of a voice.

and i really want to give them the equal opportunity to live peacefully the way they want to live. so i wanted to know if on friday evening is there more likelihood that the fire truck needed the access to these zones ? because i kind of remember those nights where things are a little bit more colorful in our city. i mean, if, if that's not really if that if that number data is not available right now. um i don't i don't know how am i able to justify doing the friday night. right. but my understanding from what we heard was that the new, the, the point of the new design, even when it is in effect on saturday, is that we can accommodate fire access, is that the fire department was at the table and has worked through this,

approved design. correct. but but my thing is here i'm seeing this line saying the reason of challenges is lack of activation . and then point two is inconsistently meeting permit conditions such as barricade placement and monitoring intersections. so when folks got the notice of violation in the building department is because once people got the permit and they violated what they agreed to do under that permit, so i'm just using the similar application on policy on permit holder and how we can help each other out to make our city safer and better for everyone. so yeah, i mean, i would just say to mike, to the friday night compromise, it sounds like if we're coming up with barricade placement that ameliorate some of fire department's concerns about folks double parking in the intersection, then that's going to be the new barricade placement. so we'll see if that

actually works or not. and adding friday night maybe just gives more potential opportunity for double parking, but we'll know if it works right? if it if the kind of curve works or not in terms of activation like i think the importance is like when are people coming to this area and they're going to want to sit outside and enjoy themselves. and i think the public commenter who said like like making people do like, like the irish jig in the middle of the street is not how we're going to make these places cool. it's by putting adirondack chairs and umbrellas and like just like letting human beings be human beings. and i don't know how we're defining activation, but i don't think we should be defining it as like, like number of attendees who've signed up to a flash mob on eventbrite. okay, i agree. i think the example of the adirondack i love that. just to jump in, director, i agree that we would define that as activation. it doesn't have to be some live event. people using the space and activating the space. and i hope supervisor preston's office, if they're listening like maybe you can provide some funding for this

neighborhood to buy some adirondack chairs and some umbrellas and some furniture to like make it interesting. and maybe you could also help the merchants find a place to store these things, maybe also helping them to train folks that they can actually monitor and better with the barricade placements and monitoring intersections is so and these are all things that we're eager to do, but we're currently not staffed to do. we are eager to develop a strategy for helping make sure that these activations are successful. but that's currently not within our means. i also just need to point out that that changing the recommendation to include fridays will require that we restart the entire process, including forcing the community to go back through the task process and it loses about a at least a month of staff time that would require we halt progress on other street activations while we redo this process. so just for your consideration, as you think about what today's

action wait a second, haven't they they've applied for a three day permit. you we came back to them and said we think it should be one day. we've hauled them out to the mta board for us to presumably flush this out and we can't go back to them and say, as the mta board, we think you applied for three days, we'll give you a day and a half. so deputy city attorney susan susan cleveland-knowles may speak to it, but why would you bring this to us to, like discuss directors? deputy city attorney susan cleveland-knowles so at least for this hearing, you can act today, day on director teal's motion, which would amend the resolution that's in front of you. but we would recommend you vote at your next meeting because what was noticed on your agenda for today was a one day closure. it was a little interesting notice, but it was just for the one day. so we'd be expanding it to a day and a half

. may i have just let me i'll let you finish and. sorry, director. so let me just finish on the task. notice that i do not have that in front of me. i don't know if it was the application and everyone discussed all of the issues with one, two and three days. if that's the case, it may not need to go back to task, but i can't know that sitting here unless this miss moonwatch understands how that process worked. and apologies, director. so for it did go to escott in march for three days there was no action taken, but at least that that was a step taken with the original application. three days there was not consensus, so we weren't able to sort of approve or deny at that time. so i don't know if that would facilitate that requirement or another action step would be the likely need to cut frequency on the 21 days, because friday night is when the bus is experiencing the most delay. as a result from the friday evening commute,

congestion on the reroute. so i'm going to jump in here. okay, director. so director tilghman, you said something very important, and i think it really needs to be sort of fleshed out and explained a little bit more. you said there is near universal agreement between sfmta staff supervisor preston, the merchants, the community on what is the ultimate outcome. so i think it's really important for everybody here to hear you say what is that ultimate outcome in kind of specific terms so that we actually know what we're talking about. could you elaborate on that statement a little bit more? sure. i mean, the outcome is a space that fosters in enjoyment and commercial success. it is a space that's vibrant, that feels safe for people of all ages and abilities that supports the merchants success while accommodating the merchant functionality like curbside pickup and drop off somewhere. right i mean, we've we've seen these streets all over the world. we love them. we're capable of delivering them here in san francisco. but success for these streets follows a very

specific set of requirements. when we look at such successful spaces around the world. and so one of the key things that we're working on trying to develop is, is what is that entity that fosters the activation? so can we work with a nonprofit organization to have commercial activation in a box and a sort of nonprofit that can receive private funds and can staff up around a certain amount of expertise where the sfmta is role is, is making sure that the functional needs are taken care of and that the safety requirements are met for all emergency services as well as for traffic safety, as well as to the extent that it's appropriate, funneling public money that can be then combined with private money in order to create barcelona or paris or, you know, antigua, you know, where where wherever it is that you love. may i? may i? yeah yeah. may i? i don't want to

forgot my thought after being interrupted, but i thought the idea. so if. if a call is entertained, my idea. if we approve what the staff recommended today with the condition to monitor the if the operators of the merchants actually do work collaboratively to address these challenges that have been listed in here, they could come back within this year period of time to request for a longer duration of street closure. yes, that's actually exactly what we're trying to set up by consolidating two saturdays and investing in success. we're eager to not only allow, but actually encourage the merchants to expand just as quickly as they're ready. so that's an unfriendly amendment to my motion. i want to advocate for adding friday nights back,

because it's been made clear to me from the merchants that friday nights was a very successful evening for them. and so if we're trying to emulate what a successful street closure feels like in this block, having them continue to have a portion of it, we're talking about five hours where lots of people were already coming to this neighborhood, giving them an opportunity to try it out on a friday night. and a saturday, which is a reduction by 50% of what they had. so it's still cutting it in half. seems to me like a fair compromise. and but i agree, giving them this opportunity, letting them activate it, giving them a little bit more time because it sounds like some of the merchants want it gone. some want it all the way to three days. we've asked them to go to nine hours. it's just giving them a little bit more time to figure this out on friday nights. and. yeah, i think it's no one's going to be happy with there's no one's going to be happy with everything that comes out of this. i'm just trying to figure out a way to give that,

to give them a little bit more. yeah i acknowledge your intent and i'm trying to work around. so then also our agency doesn't cause another month of payroll to go back into the drawing board and come back again. i mean, you know, so then we approve it now so they can actually start trying this out. and the merchants will really start to operate it in the way that the permit is intended for them to do, and then they can come back and then add that those hours back. director henderson, you want to weigh in. i'm really i have a question for the city attorney, because i didn't understand the order of operations that you laid out. so if we i hear the amendment or. yeah, right now i hear there's it's too it's too i want to add friday night and i want us to study making it permanent, how much it would cost, what it would look like. okay and so that's different than my recommendation is approve it right now and let's with the

condition of monitoring the merchants operation now and then giving them an opportunity to extend the operational hours within this year of the permit. so then we can policy. why administrative, why we can actually proceed according to the timeline and we don't have to wait another 30 days of moniker and the rest of the team's time. but but what's on the agenda today or how to, i guess i'm trying to figure out like whatever the vote is today. i heard you say something then could occur in a month. and so what? so, yeah, let me so first of all, director, sir, was that a motion that you were making a recommendation of the. yeah as a motion that i recommend. okay. to work around with everybody. the, the, the, the, the circumstances we have and with the fiscal responsibility that we have as an agency and also the yearning for the merchants that director to share with us

and also seeing on the our staff and also the small businesses. and also can i do a hybrid fire department? can i do a hybrid motion of these two? i just hoping to capture the best of both to clarify what what did we actually henderson's? yeah, let me just reply to director henderson's the, the reason i asked is if. if director feels motion which has a second by director hensey is voted on today, it would be a motion to amend what's in front of you today to add it to a day and a half based on what miss munich said, it sounds like it was noticed at escott for three days, in which case i do not think it would need to go back to escott. it would just come back to you here at your next meeting for a vote with the

notice for fridays and saturday, and i'll be watching. oh if director sos motion is seconded and approved, she does not have a second at this point. but if she does have a second and it's approved, it would become effective. you would vote on it and it would you wouldn't do anything else except vote today. it would not come back to you have i answered your question? yes okay. thank you. if there is a third motion, it looks like we got a supervisor in the room from the chair. then we would need to discuss that. okay. i am going to make a third motion, but supervisor preston, would you like to address the board? thank you very much. usually i don't have the pleasure because our board meetings are going at the same time as yours. and this one ended early and i was listening to some of the discussion and decided to stop

by. so thank you for the comments on this. and you you all obviously know the background. i do want to just emphasize a couple things. first of all, there is incredible community support for the three day active activation motion and car free space that we have now had for several years. and to undo that on basically a week's notice, maybe 8 or 9 days is, i believe is would really is not going over well in the community i represent and is not going over well with with our office s the i would understand the board's reluctance given the staff recommendation to move forward today with a full three day closure. and i understand from the conversations that's not where the discussion is headed. i do not understand and

want to reiterate our request that this matter be continued. and there is absolutely no reason that all stakeholders cannot be brought together to plan out an activation that is satisfactory to mta staff to preserve of this three days here at and to. it makes little sense to take that action now. now my understanding is in terms of temporary authorizations that it could continue on a temporary basis through december. there's nothing expiring here in terms of authorization to continue on a temporary basis at and we really run the risk by adopting something that limits us to a day or even two days of severely undermining the program. and sending, i think, a message the opposite of what we should be

sending in terms of having a vision of really trying to protect and expand the car free space in in our city. so i just want to reiterate the request and i know you have multiple motions and procedurally we'll figure out where you want to go at the same time, i do think a motion to continue would be in order and would take precedence, if i'm not mistaken, over the various, i guess three different to three different motions that you've got. but what what i've not heard at all is any reason why this has to be done against the wishes of so many in the community on about a week's notice just doesn't make any sense. gives us some space. our office community leaders are looking forward to doing whatever it takes to preserve this for multiple days. and finally, i just want to say, because as a avid supporter of public transit in san francisco with all due respect, using the 21 bus as an excuse is not going over well. as someone who rides that bus daily, that thing is

running once every 20 minutes. so if there's a problem with service right now, it's not about the shared spaces and the threats of friday activation to ongoing bus service. it's the fact that the bus is barely running at this point on a shortened route three times an hour. so supervisor preston, can i just bring you in? i don't know if you've been watching, but can i bring you in on on an important thread of this conversation and get your perspective on this? sure. i think that director uchitelle made a very compelling point, which is that we want the rules of the road. to be clear, we want people to understand what's going on and that the clearest solution is actually to look at something more like a 24 over seven closure rather than well, which days of the week. i can't keep track. and this is causing frustration and we don't want that. i can't even remember what what nights it is. and i go there all the time. so. so that's compelling to me. and that that that that gives an opportunity for some more permanent placemaking and permanent community and that you made the point that popping up and going away and popping up and going away doesn't actually

kind of create something meaningful. so i just wonder in all your dialogs and conversations, is that your vision as well? look, our offices vision is we would absolutely be supportive of looking at ways to expand the hours we've worked. we've tried to balance the various interests around the days, and i know i've spoken with some of you and with director tumlin about what's been an evolving you know, originally it was a three block closure to private vehicles. has since become the one block happy to discuss. and i think there would be significant community support for more like a round the clock type closure. but again, i don't think these kind of decisions should be on the fly, constricting it or exploring the broader closure. the again, there's no reason these, you know, these kind of decisions should be made on this. the kind of 7 to 10 day timeline. so i'm wide open to and i appreciate that suggestion and i do think that would give increased clarity to folks. i

think we have to we would have to talk to the businesses and the residents. right. about their views of the of the 24 hour closure. but our office, certainly, to the extent there was community support for that, would be supportive of that. but what i'm concerned about is what's before you right now, as i understand it, is eliminating 70% of the hours. i will just tell you on behalf of my constituents and from my office that that is perceived as and i believe accurately perceived as a gutting of car free. hayes that is unnecessary. and that to the extent we can have a collaborative discussion and bring everyone together and explore these kind of possibilities, i see no reason that can't be put over a number of weeks or we had recommended early december here that i'd like to go ahead and put my motion forward for consideration. thank you, colleagues. thank you for being here. did you want to respond to the supervisor's comments? i have a quick point of clarification. if i can. go

ahead. i just wanted to in the spirit of things being clear on the street and the hours, they are closed, i just want to make sure it's top of mind and doing my transit colleagues justice that as i understand from them, the friday difficulty of a part day is really challenging for reroute possible. but when it's a part day, it is difficult not just because of the yard compared to the weekend, but how they do it for when it's not a whole day. and it impacts riders as well. when they they know know to pick up the bus part of the day versus another part not it's solvable but it is just a trade off. i want to be transparent about for fridays as well as the fact that we're going to be going into earlier evenings very soon. it'll be dark sooner. yeah. and that just means nighttime activations are just feel a little different into the winter. okay. thank you. so i would like to recommend that we approve. we take action today that we approve what is before us and what has been noticed and what has been studied of the saturday permit, because that is a

foundation as vice chair kahina said so eloquently that we can build upon that is not a ceiling. that is a foundation. so we take that action, we approve that piece, we direct staff to study and explore if there are solutions on the friday night closure and come back to us within six months with a recommendation. if we want to add that piece in and that we look at what it would take a study of what it would take to actually make it permanent to your vision. director of the 24 over seven, which may ultimately be the evolution that makes the most sense for this community. so that would be three pieces moving forward and you would get to vote on it today. so jerry can for clarity, what was that that middle piece? so we've got we've got the approving ones before us today. and the study of and then we would direct staff to look at just rather than doing this on the fly, we would direct staff to look at the friday night piece which we've heard from the community as meaningful. but rather than doing it today, we would study

that and make sure that we're working through the issues with our operators whose concerns we take very seriously and come back to us in six months with a recommendation of what you what you think is the right way to go forward to potential add fridays and study what what it would take to make this permanent in line with so many people's visions that we've heard today. so then the duration then would still be a year or sorry, sorry. director lindsay, the permit duration, would that still be a year that under your motion permit duration would be a year. but i'm open to alternatives. if people feel strongly. right right. so you're recommending a year as well? yeah okay. okay. so can i respond to your i mean, we'll vote on all these amendments and see where the votes hit. but this street closure has been worked on by our staff and by the community and nauseam. there's been two

surveys, multiple departments, the mayor's office, the supervisor, his office. i think there are two competing petitions us from from multiple groups about what should happen and should not happen. i just don't want to send our folks out there and have to do like a whole nother set of surveying and look ing and wondering and just to come back to add five hours. and so i just i actually don't think that more study about what the community wants is what is needed right now. i think they need i think they need to be given their parameters of what the street closure should be. i think the merchants have heard loud and clear, i don't want to speak for them that the mta wants certain things to be done, not mta, but also fire the community like this has been bruising. so i think we should we should we deserve to give them some clarity about what this block should look like and then we should give them the opportunity to try to make it happen. so i would just say from the perspective of like putting this to bed a bit, having them like we think we might want to give

you friday night, but we want to give you like a couple of months to see if you can do friday night. like it just feels very unsettling. so i think whatever should come out of this, we should be giving them clear parameters. we don't we don't make them come back to scott and go through that whole process again and then just let them try to make this work or not work. that's just my reaction to your to your third. but we should vote. see what people think after the fire forgot how to address you. fire marshal. fire marshal was trying to say something to us earlier. i wonder if he'd like to share. i just wanted to respond to director sos inquiry regarding feedback. as as monica stated, they're not there 24/7. we're we're working 24 over seven. and we provided consistent feedback. when we have problems. actually, one of the slides, one of the pictures was one we took our when we couldn't get through or upon return from a call. so we you will receive feedback because the fire department will send mta feedback of incidents that occur. and that has

happened consistently over the last year with lloyd through monica has received feedback regarding it and hence the reason why we modified the cones in response to the inability to staff the ends. so whatever you approve, we don't the fire department doesn't have a problem with it. we just want to be able to get through. okay. that's that's all it is. so we provide soul feedback on can we get through when we need to in an emergency situation. so you will receive consistent feedback from us because we have let our companies in the field know we have our own process internally to feed that through. it goes to my office and then i just send a nice little message over to monica and she can go ahead and archive that. so i want to let you know you will receive feedback, whether it's one day, two days, three days through mta what kind of response we're going to give. okay. so that's all i wanted to say is you can't get feedback. director tomlin can you can you just please explain how significant of an

issue the 21 friday piece is? because we want to honor the fact that this streets change exists within a part of a multimodal agency, and we want to honor our transit colleagues. i can't quite tell how much of a concern this is. monica, do you want to speak to this or i will try my best. so two things is i think when they reroute, there's certain shifts that an operator takes. and i think when it's broken up and when you only close the street for the five hours in the weekend and on a day like on friday, it is proven to be very difficult for those shifts. so an operator comes into the shift. it could be midway through a shift. they've actually driven through the closure a few times on fridays and we've had photos sent to us and it's like, oh my goodness, and a problem. we can work through. but it is unique to fridays in terms of shift. and then the second piece again was, i believe, the presidio versus the kirkland yard, presidio yard

on the friday services trolley busses overhead wires. and that reroute is also different for oh, julie, just in time. we're we're a three minute time delay back there. okay so i would love to just hear what you just said and then i'm happy to. julie i was explaining about a friday closure in the 21 that there are my understanding the presidio serves it on fridays, that there are shifts that operator takes. so if the closure is just 4 to 10, it has proven to be a little bit difficult for operators and how they're communicating. and it could be part way through a shift versus the weekend and the kirkland yard, those operators have much clearer understanding of what they need to do with a longer day closure and also the rubber tire busses can maneuver around the closure a little bit more easily. so it's clear from this discussion that there's a lot of moving parts to this issue and transit does not want

to be a barrier to follow thing. the board's direction on this topic. we do currently have to go off wire in order to implement this change. that's very easy to do. when we remove the wire, the poles from the wire because that doesn't require the operator to get out of the vehicle. so it is a little harder when we go back onto the wire because cause even with some of the pans we have that direct the wire, there's still about a 1 in 3 chance that the operator is going to have to get out of the vehicle. we also had some challenges is kind of with with this friday shutdown because it happens mid shift so we did have especially when the barriers were not put in place,

we did have operators that either didn't receive the proper training or just kind of lost the. we're not we're not expecting it and went through the project area instead of doing the reroute because it happens mid-shift it's definitely harder to for us to manage something thing that doesn't happen all day long but that being said, we have other places that we are dealing with complexity in the transit system . so we will certainly be follow the board's guidance and make whatever our kind of solution we come to work. for the 21 days and for the customers having more, much better support on signage is critical and having

support on the barriers is critical, which i know is something that we have communicated to the project sponsors via the via monica. okay. some times my colleagues use the term blocking concern. do you have a blocking concern with us approving friday night? no. okay. thank you. okay. any other colleagues want to weigh in. okay. i think procedurally i'll look to you, susan, what's the best first order of business here? we have these three motions. you only have one motion that has a second motion. that's a second. marnie's motion on the table. and also for procedure for christine is also a good resource here. okay um, so can you, can you can you

restate your motion, director uchitel, for clarity for everyone? it's to amend the item to add 5 to 10 p.m. on friday nights and to require the sfmta to study the cost and the design potential design options for a permanent street closure on this block of hayes with been. six months, six months to just study those questions study the permanent peace. yeah how much it would cost and what it could look like. yeah 24 seven but that's it. was it different than what you were suggesting at first? no no, i don't think so. no it's seemed to me okay. is she trying to comment? no, i was just backing up. director. you could you. okay. and you still

second that motion? director hensley. yes. um, yes. yes. assuming so. director or deputy city attorney susan cleveland-knowles. you're saying that we're not going to hold your feet to the fire, but you're saying that this would not probably need to go to as god? so with so we could vote on this today and then it come back at our next meeting and then it'd be would be binding on. yeah. okay sorry. director hensley. yes. so the vote today for director yaku would be to amend the resolution that's in front of you. but because it expands the number of days and hours noticed for today, that resolution would be brought back to you on november seventh or whenever the secretary calendars it and you would vote on it at

that point. we appreciate you. yes. still second that motion, you would vote on the amending the resolution today. yes. then the resolution would be amended. and you would then we would re notice it with the appropriate days and times. and it would come back to you at your next meeting. yes. okay and it could be on your consent calendar or not. okay that's your preference to have no action today? well, it's not no action on it's amending the resolution and you guys have to do a vote. you have to vote on an amended resolution . director hemminger, please. well, i'm not going to make a motion because we've got plenty of those. i do want to ask a question. supervisor preston indicated that he had gotten very little notice about this proposal. so what are the facts

on that question? i'll defer to staff. monica minovitch sure. um the permit expired in march, so we've been working with the community since march. they were, for example, went to a public hearing in march because the permit expired and we've worked directly with the supervisor's office through the summer to while they've been in this sort of transition period. and and when did the one day come up for first versus three days, which is the status quo? early september for about a month and a half ago at the completion of the stakeholder meetings is when we first brought that back to the community. well, labor day weekend, you know, there are a lot of ideas on the table here and i'm just trying to distinguish among and between them. it sounds like director

yakhchals idea cannot take effect until a subsequent meeting and i don't know why. we just couldn't take advantage of the fact if that's true and i'd call it a continuance until that meeting. and talk to people and vet the idea that he's suggested as a compromise, which seems reasonable to me, and go forth from there, you could call it a continuance. you could call it a delayed reaction in which i guess is the implication of the motion that is on the table from director yekutiel. does that all track with you? council well, yes. that is correct. also, just because you amend the resolution today does not necessarily mean you need to have the same vote at the next meeting. so you could approve director yakhchals motion today and but you could

also direct staff to notice it's a broader spec item of dates and times. you know, i'm not going to go into potted plants today, but but it seems to me this is one of those moments again. and i just don't think we have a satisfac free way of dealing with uncertain certainty because as you bring a staff recommendation to us at a board meeting, we want to change it, which is what policy boards are allowed to do. and we're told that, oh, in that case you've got to wait 30 days or 60 days or and it's sort of that information is being weaponized against us. so that we adhere to the staff recommend motion instead of having a better way to handle an independent policy view. and i think if it has to do with just how we organize as

the meeting and how we characterize the items so that we have some wiggle room in this case, the wiggle room is one day or three and twos in between. so if we had written it so that we could have chosen chosen among them again, i just don't think the process should be a way of tipping the scales on whether we approve your recommendation on or approve one of our own and i'm afraid we're stumbling into that too often. i certainly hear what you're saying, director. we have talked about this issue before of making sure that for our more challenging or controversial projects that we invest the extra staff time necessary to have a discussion item first to get feedback and then do the additional staff work to have potential multiple completed resolutions is available to you. and i realize that's a drag, but i do think it

would allow us to have a pure policy discussion instead of worrying about what is this going to trigger this codicil on the brown act? yes. so we're in complete agreement. however, you've also provided us with a direction to move a lot more quickly. and the greatest constraints that we face here, in addition to money, is staff time. and our staff time is our staff. availability is shrinking dramatically right now. so we are simultaneously trying to deliver more with fewer people and that means making some hard choices about where are we directing the staff time regard to with regard to decisions like this. in this case, we made a judgment that that because what we were doing, because there's agreement about the outcome, we're wanting to take action about the floor or to build from towards that outcome and that we can change that outcome at any

time. we could change it three months from now if we figure out some solutions to the problem. but in the meantime, we needed a real permit and so in this case, the staff recommendation was to move quickly to establish the floor for and then use our staff time to build success rather than using staff time with more bureaucratic processes and writing additional resolution for a more for a policy choice to happen here. and i have to say, colleagues, i find that to be compelling. and that is why i am motivated to act today as opposed to continue this, which then involves more staff time, more process, more dialog, more bureaucracy. and i'll heat up a vote today. my bias is to second chair egan's motion. the rules of order. thank you. so we have two motions with a second and i want to state something that according to the slide that i got today with the report that

the office of the small businesses actually went out and conducted aid and reached out to the merchants on these three blocks and 92% of them. and the result i'm seeing is that 66% of them are in favor for prefer or satisfied with a one day closure. i just want to state that that on record. so, susan, we have two motions now. one is for an action today. one is to amend the motion. how do you advise we proceed, christine, do you want to answer that question or my understanding is that you would take the first motion first. so director patel's motion. okay. which has a second. they both have a second now. they both do, yes. okay so are we trying to weigh in again? well i was i think trying to ask you a question because, again, getting back to the point, i was making, there's going to be a

delay either way. right unless your motion is approved. and if director udall's motion is approved, it can't take effect until all the next meeting at the earliest. right okay. yes yes. or we can act today. continuing to evaluate friday with our transit operators to study the 24/7 closure and keep moving forward of trying to act fast. i don't know how much more , more discussion we need to have about one versus two versus three. it's three choices. one, right after the other. and there there clearly is not consensus on. three and one on. and so that i believe, is why direct tory was trying to come up with to and so i don't know how much more vetting to would have to take. but if we do the vetting and it comes back and we can

say, okay, we're going to do two instead, or we're going to keep three, or we're going to do. one my understanding from staff, this was always your intention on approve this floor today, continue dialog, continue building activation, continue to explore what the vision is for this space. so that's consistent. that's right. and in particular, remove the hardest day, which is friday in order to build success and then once there is success, we can reevaluate fridays. can i just throw another bone in here? what? what it sounds like, at least from the staff perspective, that friday night presents a lot of difficulties. what if we give them sunday instead of friday and. in that way we remove the like, the potential issues with the shifts and the 21 days and i'm just trying to throw the merchants

who really love this and think it's really helpful to their businesses a bone here. i am not advocating for staff to go back and do a whole nother round of surveying and talking to the merchants and figuring out one versus the other. i do not want to advocate for that. director henderson. so i what i'm hearing, i just want to be clear. what i'm hearing is not necessarily go back and study one, two or 2 or 3 days, but go back and study, move forward today and study permanent, which would be beyond three days. but instead, the entire set of blocks for or 24 over seven. and i think that so i don't think that there's a today i don't hear a choice between the one or the two or the three days. it's

either one, one or or not or we continue for this half a day, whichever days of the week. i guess we can work that out with the, you know, by next month. but study but i hear the direction is figure out the next the possibility for a long term 24/7 closure right and so can we make sure that or can we add that direction to study to any of the motions that come forward ? because it sounds like that's where the that sounds like the goal or the end goal of this is to figure out what's possible for the long term, whether whether we land on one, two, three days. i think that was in both. yes. okay. and so we vote now or you know, whenever your direction is. but we vote first on on director hotels. day and a

half proposal and we don't does that day and a half have to be specific like do we have to say 15 hours between friday and saturday or can it be open like we were suggesting in the staff and the merchant groups? figure out the best 15 hours of the weekend to do it. can i respond to that? the reason i proposed friday night is because it was communicated to me from the merchants that that period of time that that luscious kernel of time was the time that people were utilizing this space the most. and so trying to protect the time that people are actually going to hayes valley and eating and want to be out on the street. and we all want it to be successful. but so the idea is giving them a little bit of more of that time to utilize. and so that's why i wanted it to be specific, because we've done a lot of feedback. we've done a lot of surveying. that's what's been communicated to me as like an important time not to lose. okay so yeah, i do want to keep

it specific. i do want to i do want to amend the resolution to add friday nights. we both are in agreement that we want to study what 24 hours would look like, though. okay so just from a process standpoint, so everyone understands if director kaushal's motion is approved, that's it, then there's not a possibility to take an action today, correct? sure you can. if i could correct myself. i'm sorry. okay the substitute motion should be voted on first. so your your motion. the second one should be voted on first and then we can go to the original motion. okay. and then process wise, if that motion to approve today and study the longer term as director henderson laid out, if that's approved, how do we then why accurately consider the other motion? because that feels like direction today. whatever. if the first motion that's voted on is approved, then that's that's done. okay, but not like a why not me vibe. but if i, i

propose my motion first and it was seconded first and shouldn't shouldn't since that was the first amendment, that motion that was proposed in second, shouldn't that do i not understand the rules properly? maybe i don't. is that the direction of our secretary if i don't at this point, five years later, the situation should get voted on first? is there any understanding as a substitute. i've been substituted. you're the main motion. no, she's the substitute. your main motion. okay okay. so we're going to call a vote on the proposal, which is to move forward today. move forward with the floor of saturday. closure for directing staff to study the question that's been raised of the friday night and just make sure that works for our transit partners to bring back as soon as you're ready recommendation on that piece as well as to study the larger 24 over seven closure, which has been seconded. could you please call the roll on that motion? this is your this is chair eakins motion. correct. okay. correct it. if i may, just

quickly ask the city attorney, there was a resolve clause that that staff needed to add to this approval. yes. that is correct. the vehicle code requires for a road closure that your resolution includes the following an additional resolve clause that for the reasons discussed in the public hearing, the sfmta board finds that the street closure is necessary for the safety and protection of persons who are using that portion of the street during the closure. so, chair aitken, if you could amend your motion to include that language, so we would appreciate it. thank you. deputy city attorney cleveland-knowles okay. on that motion and the amendment. director hemminger no grenade director henderson. hi, henderson. i director hinsey no. and director. so yes. so i. director uchitel. no. uchitel

no. director kalena nay. kehena no. chair aitken a chicken. and i thank you that motion passes 4 to 3. no, it doesn't pass. i think we. oh my gosh. only i'm sorry three votes. so that motion fails. okay, we can go back to the second. the original motion director uk'otoa's motion director teal's motion is to amend the resolution to add the friday evenings and require the agency to study potential permanent street closure of hay street. and don't forget, deputy on that and susan cleveland-knowles amendment to very good thank you. and what about the sunday versus friday thing that you just put in play? i'm going to i'm we're going to forget that. okay. yeah. thank you. can someone repeat one more

time? this motion is the motion is to amend the resolution motion to add friday evening and require the agency to study potential permanent street closures of hay street within six months. and to add the amendment, as stated by the city attorney, adding that resolve clause. okay go ahead and call the roll director hemminger. hi hemminger. director henderson. hi henderson. i director hinsey. hi, director. so. director. so i'm thinking can you go to somebody else first? no, you can't. no we cannot. this is voting to just amend this resolution and not take a vote. not take an action today. all right. i so i. director yuku a yuku i director coquina coquina

i chair egan egan. i thank you. that motion is passes unanimously. okay. next item. let's go ahead and call the next item. thank you. item 11 amending transportation code division two, section 601 to designate full time transit only area on hyde street between eddie and mcallister streets and approving various traffic and parking modifications between geary and mcallister streets to improve transit and pedestrian safety as part of the hyde street. quick build project includes items a through. to you in the agenda. okay. can you hear me okay? yes, go

ahead. thank you. um. thanks. good afternoon, chair ekin directors. my name is jennifer molina and my senior transportation planner in the streets division in the project manager for the hyde street quick build. i'd like to recognize the entire project team. this project was a team effort across multiple divisions. but most importantly, this project would not be before the board today without the determination of the tenderloin community. before jumping to hyde street, i want to provide a quick overview. two of the important work city staff and community partners have accomplished over the past several years in the tenderloin. this map highlights the various traffic safety and street changes that have taken place in the community. this includes four quick builds, two shared spaces and a neighborhood wide

no turn on red and speed limit reduction from 25 to 20mph. this work would not have been possible without the dedicated advocacy work of those who live and work in the tenderloin. so hyde street quick build. it's the fifth quick build in the tenderloin. our quick build efforts continue to inform our agency's ongoing outreach and engagement practices. hyde's outreach process was centered on partnering with community residential based groups within the community. also, i want to point out that this team continues to work closely with our transit priority team, who are leading the high transit project that that went to the board earlier this month. this ongoing ongoing coordination was key to advancing this proposal. proposal you see today. so hyde street today, hyde street is busy, mixed use corridor with a variety of civic facilities, libraries, parks, as well as

small businesses, apartments, sros and health and service oriented organizations. it's also a very popular pedestrian corridor for those walking or strolling and rolling, especially for families, seniors and people with disabilities. high street is a one way southbound corridor with three vehicle lanes between geary and mcallister street. it also has parking on both sides of the roadway and loading the 19, polk wrote in three golden gate transit regional bus routes travel on the hyde street within this project corridor to the 19, polk connects several neighborhoods, including neighborhoods identified in the muni service equity strategy on average, one person on hyde is hit every month based on five years of collision data over half of those collisions are pedestrians. the top three most frequent crashes crash types are drivers failure to lead and yield in the crosswalk, followed

by red light violations and unsafe speeds. starting in fall of 2022, our project team focused on listening and relationship building with community stakeholders along hyde and nearby. this work included several visioning sessions with our community partners to co-develop an outreach plan. partners included organized and residents from the community, including the tenderloin, people's congress, cbd, safe passage, the tenderloin, traffic safety task force and code tenderloin in winter of spring of 2023, the outreach team focused mostly on in-person engagement, including pop ups in block to block outreach stakeholder meetings were also set up to connect with community and resident based groups, both virtually and in person. so during this listening period, the outreach team collected hundreds of surveys, mostly in person, to understand project priorities and top

traffic safety concerns. the top four priorities include ensuring pedestrian safety, improving transit reliability, considering a protected mobility lane and speed reduction on. so based on these priorities and the feedback collected on both phases of outreach staff recommend actually, i apologize. slide eight building up the team's first phase of outreach, the project team developed two quick build design options as understanding a hybrid approach was important for outreach. the team developed an interactive story map that presented project background and walked viewers through proposals with an option to take a brief survey. our outreach team also organized several in-person tabling events and workshops at trusted community spaces and sros to review designs and engage with project staff. these workshops included monolingual events in

both spanish and chinese. okay so based on these priorities and feedback during both phases of outreach, staff are recommending advancing a road diet between geary and eddy in a transit only lane from eddy to mcallister street intersection safety improvements at ellis and eddy would include painted safety zones and left turn safety treatments. the project also includes a modest curb management plan that proposes additional or extended color curb to provide more space for loading and also to deter double parking. given the growing interest in the community to see a protected north to south. mobility lane in the neighborhood, the team did propose a similar design to our recommendation that also included an east side running mobility lane. the design proposal for a quick build was was limited by several

constraints for the project team that included existing bulb outs, muni service loading and parking in emergency response needs. one of the major trade offs with the design. with this design specifically was that all east side parking and loading would need to be removed for the entire six blocks. while it was clear that the tenderloin community is in support of a protected mobility lane, the design this design would further exacerbate parking and loading challenges, especially for small businesses, but also for paratransit and taxi services. staff are still committed to working with the tenderloin community to identify a north and south mobility lane. there is currently an opportunity to identify future active transportation projects and policies with within the active communities plan. so so given the team's recommendation today, we are asking the board to consider for approving the transit lanes on hyde street between eddy and mcallister

street in improving traffic and parking modifications on hyde between geary and mcallister streets. if approved, quick build implementation would start in late october into early november. for this project will also be followed by a six month evaluation in spring of 2024. our project work will also include ongoing coordination with our transit colleagues, both in construction and project evaluation. that concludes my presentation. an and thank you for your time. thank you so much for your presentation. jennifer directors, are there any clarifying questions? yes, i did have some questions, but i'm very scared. if i may. yes, please. before director lindsay. um just a few comments and questions. first question questions. i know that when the transit only lane came before us last week, we talked to we

talked about an express some concern around the fulton plaza, um, surrounding areas. and i, i know that staff has been doing some work around those intersections. so i don't know if kimberly or jennifer, you want to sort of summarize at a high level where we're at with those, um, with those discussions. sure i can speak to the updates that i have. and also kimberly is here to add if needed. so thank you, director, for that question. yes and so as part we did receive some feedback from community members around some of the pedestrian safety concerns they had at fulton and hyde as well as fulton and larkin. and that's really essentially with the farmers market moving over to the fulton plaza, the there is a

there is a concern around people, particularly seniors and people with disabilities, accessing that and crossing over . so our team did actually look at some options. and we are we are recommending right now is installing large wide painted safety zones is essentially to shorten the crossing distance for people, but to also increase visibility through the application of post and some khaki khaki paint essentially. and that one we know is feasible on the larkin. so on the west side of larkin, we can do so. it's just a beefed up version of a painted safety zone. we've done it along. lincoln and this is something we know we can do and do fairly quickly. the option on hyde and fulton is a little bit more complex since we're working with our transit colleagues as well as there's ongoing construction with the

with the project work that our colleagues over at ruskin park are doing. we have to see if and when that actual application of a large painted safety zone would be actually feasible and so that's ongoing conversation with with transit and our city colleagues. but we are committed to the larkin and fulton application of a large pedestrian safety painted safety zone. and that i think at this point we anticipate we could complete that by end of year. excellent. and thank you for looking into that so quickly and um, we've, we've had a lot of conversations around and other hearings today and needing to come back with other hearings. so um, and i don't want, i don't want to put the community through another hearing so can you maybe clarify that we wouldn't need a additional legislation? yeah. no, that's a

great question. i think well, essentially for the larkin fulton location in the area where we're actually proposed posing a painted safety note painted safety zone is already a tan set. so essentially we wouldn't we wouldn't have to go through through a legislation process there. the other location, again, i don't have information on the hyde fulton location. we still need to see if and when that's actually possible. yes. and then my last question and then have comments and gratitude for the team. but our last question is, i know that there is some concern around when the this segment of the transit only lane is going to be color colorized. and i, i know that transit technically considers is this a you know

highlight while we look at the design so if we if you could speak to that speak to that i know staff intends to colorize it at some point in the future. no thank you for that question. and i do want to note some transit only lanes in the city are not necessarily colorized red. so in terms of the question around and i just want to confirm you're asking whether the section from eddie to mcallister would be colorized red, correct? yep correct. all right. thanks. well, at this time, we are not colorizing the section between mcallister and eddie red. we our plan is to actually evaluate the effectiveness, effectiveness of the travel of the transit lane as part of our six month evaluation plan, including looking at transit travel times and the reliability of the 19. poke our conversation with our transit colleagues is

essentially any reduction in the speed or impact to the 19 poke will require us to review and look at the revision of our design, how it's functioned operationally wise, like in terms of our our lanes, how operators are feeling and then that would include the option to colorize to increase driver compliance between eddie and mcallister street. i think this evaluation actually the timeline syncs up really well with our agency's commitment to colorize hyde between mcallister and market in mid 2024. so meaning the entire eight blocks could be colorized on a similar timeline. but we really would like to use this time to make observations and monitor how this extension of the transit only lane on hyde is working. i would. i would actually agree with you. you you you know as well as i do that um that this project for the transit lane is it's also a

transit lane but it's also a road diet. but i know because of the design of the transit lane that we need to assess the effectiveness of a transit lane. but it it is critical as a road diet. but i do understand that we need we need to evaluate it before we paint it red. so i i'm actually and i know that staff knows that in portions of the road diet to the community. so those are those are my questions and colleagues i have been sort of involved in the outreach process and working sort of i've had jennifer can attest i've had many meetings with staff about this and i just want to emphasize that jennifer has done a very intense level of outreach to the community. and she was

being very modest in regards to the amount of work that she's done. so i did just want to read commend the team for this model of outreach that we've taken up. and i know that you will. there's a commitment there to work with the tenant and continue to work with the tenderloin community. also so and i know that there is a vision within the tenderloin community to have a protected bike lane of some sort someday. and i know that staff isn't necessarily giving up on giving up on that. so i will. and i know that we'll continue to do an increased amount of work in the tenderloin. and so i just want to acknowledge that. and i think to that end, kerrigan pending discussion and public comment, i will make a motion to approve the project. second, it

great. there's a motion and a second we don't have any other director comments. you took your hand down. so let's go to public comment please. for anyone in the room on this item. hey, good afternoon. my name is simon viloria, organizer and co-chair for the traffic safety task force. first off, thank you again to jennifer and mta staff for the engagement and continued communication with our community . um, i've already mentioned in last meeting, but again, want to reiterate the need for this project to be done simultaneously as the rest of hyde street. i know it's also frustrating that added complications to this project with one chunk having a separate hearing as well as an additional issue on pedestrian safety with the market moving, i understand

that this wasn't anticipated and i think staff might share the same frustration. so i just want to put that on record. also, we need a solid commitment of painting the transit only lane red and evaluate before and after colorizing as colorized transit lanes is a greater visual indicator of road diet. and with the problems in the lack of enforcement, it may also act as a deterrent. and then finally, we ask that we continue to be transparent and to continue clear communications with the community of the evaluation results and if any changes will be made. and this will help continue to build trust, exemplify this culture of care and put equity policies into action. so again, thank you for your time. thank you to mta and looking forward to getting this project completed. thank you. next speaker, please. hi, stacy randecker for the tenderloin. i believe has the

lowest percentage of car ownership of any neighborhood in san francisco and they suffer disproportionately because their neighborhood is designed as essentially a highway interchange. you have these massive three and five, including parking long one way streets going in in in opposite directions. the sister street whole concept it's great for throughput, but it's terrible for people. i didn't see a bike lane in there. if polk were pedestrianized, i'd get it. i'd understand, but polk is a show. okay. it is very difficult to bike on. it is not safe and it is the only north south corridor for in in the whole that whole quadrant of the city. i mean. yeah. oh yeah. you gave a little bit on battery but what are you supposed to do. i mean it's like this is not equitable. public transit includes vanpools is an

economically and environmentally sound alternative to transportation by individual automobiles within san francisco, travel by public transit, by bicycle and on foot must be an attractive alternative to travel by private automobile. this is in your transit first principles. it goes on all the documents that are printed. every project has this and more are emblazoned upon it. why aren't we adhering to it? why are we talking about keeping parking? why aren't we read ing and greening this entire city or closing it to automobiles so that you don't have to do any of those things where are we going to do that? please is thank you. any other speakers in the room? okay. please open the phone. actually, i want to speak on the project. jay is not quite yet. this is the hyde street. that's item 13. thank you. remote public comment at this time. we will move to

remote public comment not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. moderator for speaker. hi this is dylan faber community and policy manager at san francisco transit riders. we support the hyde street quick build project and thank staff for the extensive outreach that's been done to transit riders and the tenderloin community. but we would at the same time like to see the addition of red paint, the inclusion of transit only lanes and a road diet on hyde street from eddy to mcallister will improve safety and reduce conflicts on the corridor, all while improving speed and reliability for the thousands of riders who rely on the 19 transit. only lanes are a common sense solution to improving transit service in our transit first city. but we're concerned that the proposed designs presented today do not include the red paint. it's standard for 24/7 transit only lanes in san

francisco to receive red paint to make it clear to drivers that they should keep the lane clear for transit vehicles. we know red lanes work sfmta studies have found that painting transit lanes red can increase compliance from drivers by up to 55, even if overall overall car traffic on the road increases. so we support the swift implementation of this project with transit only lanes added immediately as soon as possible, with or without red paint, but red paint should be added as soon as staff capacity and resources allow. so before approving this item, the board should direct staff to update the proposed designs to ensure that red paint is included as part of the transit lanes. final implementation. thank you. thank you. next speaker. hello directors. my name is eric roselle and i'm a long term resident of the tenderloin and the director of state programs at timberland community benefit district and chair of the tenderloin traffic safety task

force. first, i want to thank the sfmta staff in particular jennifer and kimberly, and their hard effort in addressing our some of our questions and then some of our concerns throughout this entire process. as jaime had stated earlier, we really do ask that the fast track, the quick build project in its entirety from geary to market street. second, we ask that the complete implement station of the transit only lane from eddy to market happen in tandem with the high street transit lane project. and that number three, that the paint of the traffic only lane is red painted red from eddy to market street. that was indicated in the first outreach extensive outreach that was done that was shown that it would be red. it wasn't until later that it was indicated that they would not be red and there

was not extensive outreach when that plan had been changed to inform the community in detail that that plan had been changed. um, and so we feel like there's been kind of a bit of switch bait and switch going on there anyway. we also want to ensure that transparency again does happen with the evaluation process. thank you for your time. thank you. next speaker. can you hear me now? yes, go ahead. great. david pilpel, again. so on this item, i am opposed to this proposal. hyde street feeds eighth, which is a major freeway access route in my opinion, there is not that much transit service on this segment. the 21 hayes the 27. bryant and golden gate transit can all be rerouted off of hyde. so that would only leave the 19 polk,

which doesn't run that frequently. somehow i thought that capacity on hyde street was either a condition or a mitigation measure for the van brt project or the polk street project. it's one of the few north south streets, in this case, a southbound street that was not impacted or was not directly affected other than having additional traffic from the van ness and polk street projects. and as i said, it feeds eighth, which is a major freeway access route. i think that if this project is approved , this will mean more congestion and pollution on a corridor in a neighborhood that doesn't need it. it's not my idea. but in fact, people drive people who live in the city drive to the peninsula to drive to the east bay, need to get to a bridge and

a freeway. i don't see that the benefit here outweighs the costs. 30s i am opposed to this item. thanks for listening. thank you. no additional callers . okay, close public comment. we have a motion and a second. please call the roll on the motion to approve director hemminger. hi hemminger. director henderson. henderson. i director hinsey. hi, kinsey. i director. so i. so i director yukou i director kahina. i kahina i chair egan i egan. i thank you. the motion passes us. thank you, colleagues. i'd like to given the late hour. i'd like to recommend we take item 13 next, which is an action item related to the j church project and then reevaluate if we want to continue item 12 to the next meeting or keep going. okay. very good. thank you. places you on item number 13 amending transportation code division two, section 601 to designate full time transit only areas on san jose avenue between ocean avenue and carter street, and

approving various parking and traffic modifications include the designation of a class four bikeway at church and market street, with staff available to present. okay good afternoon, directors. good evening. whatever it is now , my name is michael rhodes. i'm the transit priority manager in the transit division and i'll be presenting today about proposed muni forward improvements on the j church. the j church line, the j church muni forward project is

a capital project that is split into three segments. today. i'll be talking about proposed upgrades at the intersection of church and market streets and on san jose avenue in the mission terrace neighborhood. a future phase of work will be looking at muni forward improvements to the j church in noe valley. the project goals are to improve safety, accessibility and comfort at church stops to address traffic safety concerns and support reliability on the j church, as well as supporting small business and neighborhood commercial vitality, especially at the church and market intersection at church and market streets, thousands of people get on or off the j or 22 every day. it's also a key transfer point to church street, muni metro station below ground. and just as importantly, it's a vital neighborhood commercial hub. we've made a series of quick build improvements since 2020 to enhance safety and accessibility and the overall

transit passenger experience. at this stop in short, we've basically been gradually upgrading this area from a basic transit stop to more of a transit and pedestrian plaza. and we're working on more quick build upgrades coming soon, focused on enhancing the transit, enhancing the actual plaza space. as you may recall, this board already approved permanent transit plaza upgrades in december 2021 at this intersection, detailed design on the permanent plaza is underway in collaboration with public works and local merchants and we expect construct on the permanent plaza to begin in 2025. the reason we're talking about this intersection today is to give you an update on the design and to seek approval for a sidewalk level bikeway through the permanent plaza. here are some of the elements that will go into the permanent version of

the plaza. there are basically two main zones in the plan design. there's the transit passenger zone. that's kind of where people are waiting for the train. that's kind of more to the left of the diagram here. and then a public plaza space kind of an extension of the sidewalk right next to sort of verve coffee and in that area there where people can drink coffee or dine from local restaurants and basically have high quality neighborhood gathering space. the plaza will include a permanent, wheelchair accessible platform, um, comfortable and welcoming transit, passenger amenities and streetscape upgrades and seating . church street is not a designated bike route, but it does have a fair volume of cyclists and we want to make sure they're not riding in the track lane. so we're proposing to include a bike path between the two zones. the original approval for this plaza included an exemption for bikes in terms of the traffic restrictions, but it didn't designate it as a class four bike route. so this

is sort of an administrative clarification of what was originally approved. so that's an update on what we're working on at church and market. and again, the only action item for the board for church and market is going to be to potentially adopt the proposed bikeway. shifting south. we've also been working on improvements to san jose avenue along the j church in close partnership with local neighbors and supervisors. our safire's office there are three main challenge areas we're looking to address with the proposed improvements on san jose. first is safety. this is a high injury corridor and we've had extensive you know, requests for safety improvements from neighborhood residents for many years. it's been on the radar for a long time. there especially concerned with speeding and safety when crossing san jose and as well as pedestrian safety at transit stops. second, of course, transit reliability and finally, accessibility. there's currently a gap of almost two miles between wheelchair accessible

stops on the j church in this area. that's from basically glen park down to balboa park. as i alluded to, there's been really a tremendous amount of community advocacy around improving safety for people walking in this neighborhood. on san jose avenue about a year ago, our project team kicked off an initial round of outreach to key community members and community based organizations in the neighborhood who were already kind of organized and interested in safety improvements and knocking, knocking on our doors to have us come talk to them. over the past year, we've presented about potential improvements to the local neighborhood association, to community based organizations, missions, to neighborhood leaders and merchants along the corridor. and this august, we returned to the community to share a final revised proposal that incorporates a lot of the feedback that we've heard throughout this outreach process . throughout the outreach, we've heard very strong support for safety improvements and improving transit reliability. we've heard a lot of requests to

enhance the crossing experience, especially for pedestrians, particularly along balboa park and some more localized feedback around parking and loading needs, especially at the roxy food center at san juan avenue. so here's what we're specifically proposing on san jose avenue between to 80 and ocean avenue. first, it would be transit lanes, which would really primarily be there to reduce speeding while supporting transit reliability. this is really about creating a road diet on an overbuilt roadway to reduce speeding while keeping transit moving. so this would reduce the roadway from four general purpose lanes, so two lanes in each direction to two total through lanes. so one lane in each direction, vehicle is making a left turn and taxis would still be allowed to use the left lane or the track lane where the trains are. there would also be extended boarding islands to provide safe loading for all train doors. currently,

some of the islands are too short and people are stepping off into a traffic lane. wheelchair accessible transit stops would be added at two intersections, so four total transit stops would have wheelchair ramps added that don't currently have them to improve accessibility and flashing beacons, sidewalk corner bulb outs, daylighting and left turn, traffic calming and continental crosswalk striping to improve safety for people walking as well. in total, this project would remove a net one parking space. as i mentioned earlier, one of the key pieces of feedback we've received has been about crossing san jose avenue along balboa park. so this is an important gathering space for the neighborhood. it's a major a major destination park as well. currently there are four intersections along the park where people may cross. as you can see in this map, labeled one, two, three, four, where currently focused on upgrading the three intersections that

have existing marked crosswalks to make these really good crossing options at havelock, santa ynez and ocean. so those are three location that are not only intersections, but they have a marked existing crosswalk. but we've also received a good amount of requests to add a marked crosswalk crossing. san jose at sergeant john young lane, which is a small park street midway through the park. these requests came a little later in the outreach process and we've just completed the engineering analysis in the past few days. so in the interest of transparency and timeliness, we wanted to share an update today. instead of waiting to get these results out to the community a later date. for now, we're recommending that the focus does remain on upgrading existing marked crossings to the park. we're not currently recommending adding a marked crosswalk at sergeant john young lane based on a few key considerations. first, there's been no recorded injury collisions at this intersection crossing san jose in the past five years. the

pedestrian volumes based on the counts we've done are pretty low. this isn't a through street, so for most people santa ynez or ocean would be the most direct path of travel. the closest marked crosswalk is at most about 370ft away at santa ynez, where there's a stop sign and marked crosswalk and a j church stop and finally adding a crosswalk here would require significant investment, such as curb ramps and flashing beacons or a traffic signal to really make it work well, because if we just put a crosswalk there without ramps and without some higher visibility measures, it's not going to be a successful crosswalk. unfortunately, we do have limited resources and improvements are urgently needed at a lot of other high injury locations throughout the city. so that's why wayne, this current safety record versus the cost of adding a crosswalk here with signalization or with a flashing beacon and with the curb ramps, we're recommending that we do not add a marked crosswalk at this time. but but we do understand the interest in this crossing and will continue

to monitor it and can revisit our recommendation if conditions change on the street. so in summary, here's what we're asking for. the board to vote on today along with the san jose avenue corridor, we're proposing transit lanes that allow busses and taxis or that also allow left turns from ocean to carter street. a left turn must turn left northbound at ocean avenue on san jose to facilitate the transit lane. it attended boarding islands and new accesses stops at santa ynez and santa rosa intersect ocean daylighting at san juan paulding, santa ynez and biden and baden rather. and flashing beacons at san juan and pauline avenues. these flashing beacons, if you're not familiar with them, are those pushbutton signs that you push and it lights up and says there's a pedestrian crossing the street as well as pedestrian bulbs or sidewalk

corner extensions at paulding and baden streets at church and market directors due to the fact that the required language for the class four bikeway was not included on the agenda for today . we are recommending that you approve the entire item today except kept the bikeway, which is item h, and we will bring the bikeway back for your approval on november seventh. on your consent calendar, we will. we've given you the background information on it, but we would bring it back for approval in two weeks on the consent. and here are our proposed and next steps. october 17th. that's today. the sfmta board is reviewing our proposals for san jose avenue, the class four bikeway at church and market would be postponed for two weeks. as i mentioned, you're going to receive an overall update about muni service today, but just to clarify, there are no proposed changes to the church as part of this project or in general at the moment. later this year or early next

year, we will implement the quick build phase of the project on san jose avenue. if approved and planning and outreach, we hope to also start for the noe valley segment. the final segment of the j church muni forward project in that time frame over the next two years, we would complete detailed design of transit plaza improvements and the san jose avenue permanent version of the improvements and starting in 2025, we would start construction of full capital elements at church and market, san jose. the whole project, including boarding islands, flashing beacons, accessible stops, bulbs, all of the elements that we can't complete during quick build. so so thank you very much. directors of course, our team is available to answer any questions you may have about the proposals. thank you, colleagues. in light of the late hour, i'm going to go to public comment ahead of your questions. that's okay. any commenters in the room for the j church item? i do have some speaker cards. prudence hall.

hillary bao. david hooper. samuel thomas. go ahead. i'm hillary brown. so start comedy. yes, actually, my name is hillary brown. i'm with the mta. sam m sfmta museum and accessibility committee. i've been serving on this committee for like five years. i would like to eventually invite to speaker, do a presentation to the to the mac community because we want to learn about how this project is pertaining to accessibility throughout the citizens in san francisco. i'm wondering, i've been serving it for five years and i want to hear about how they talk about accessibility. for example, not just wheelchair, but people who are blind. that should be taken consideration. i wasn't speaking that because i also wish there was a committee i think there's

a committee for the geary line, of which there were a visory committee for this project. and if there is, i would like to serve on it. i just all i want to say thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. microphone is tall. my name is prudence hall. i'm a resident of the mission terrace and i have been meeting with sfmta for a number of years on this on this. thank you. i am personally in favor of everything that i see on this list. i mean, some of the items i like more than others, but you know, hey, anything is great and we would like them all. and i'm very disappointed. covid that sergeant young lane was not included in this list, although i want to really appreciate it that it's on the map now,

because when we first met with philippe and with aaron mcmullen , it wasn't even on the map. but we have followed their suggestions at the several meetings we've had with them and with michael jacobson of the traffic calming program. we've pulled in our community partners. carol jankowski, who is the area five manager for rec and park, and also now captain amy hurwitz, the captain of ingleside police station, and she's appointed a person, sam berenson, who works with us on this. and we've asked for a crosswalk at that spot. but i do want to point out that it's not just a random road. it is the access to ingleside police station. it is the access to boxer stadium, a commercial stadium, and it is flanked by by

a children's playground. and the baseball fields. and we really need traffic calming at this t intersection as all intersections in this section are t intersections, not squares. thank you for your time. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. hello board members. my name is samuel thomas. i'm a mission terrace resident at and i live on san jose avenue. i'm a part of the movement for a safer san jose. i have a 17 month old son who uses balboa playground and crosses the street, literally every day. so this is a big concern for me and for other families in our community who are in the same boat that my entire family uses the corridor and we use it regularly myself and the community supporting safer, san jose are very excited that this project is moving ahead. we appreciate all the mta staff's hard work in making this happen and in making this

project a reality. we're glad the board is listening and taking action. these are all great things. overall, we've heard from the majority of the community that we've spoken with that they're pleased with the proposal, even if it doesn't contain everything that we would like to see, we would like for the board to approve this item today and for the mta to move immediately with the quick build portions of the project so that we can see the situation improved as quickly as possible. with that said, one remaining issue that has not been addressed in addition to the crosswalk is the elimination of left turns from paulding onto san jose. this is a big problem in the current configuration vehicles turn into a crosswalk across four lanes of traffic and that includes transit vehicles, cars and this is extremely dangerous and puts pedestrians in harm's way. we know it's dangerous because our 80 year old neighbor who one of our directors has met was struck and injured in exactly this way a little over a year ago. and he

now requires a home health aide with him most of the time. so with that said, i think we view this project as just the beginning, and there's still a lot more to do. we need a comprehensive set of streetscape improvements every thing in this proposal is fantastic work. it is a transit optimization project. we would love to have the signals team as well as the streets team engage with us to move things ahead. thank you very much. thank you. next speaker, please. stacy randecker. both these projects hit me hard because my son, well, both my kids went to everett middle school and because the 55 doesn't go all the way to across to church and market, we will often drive him to church and market to catch muni to go to lowell and my daughter started her high school career at balboa. my son played

ball on that field many, many times and i am very familiar with the street they're talking about. and that is a desire line that is how people go to the park. and that should have at minimum, the lousy freaking crosswalk that you have there right now. just stripe it. just make it something, make it bold, make it pretty big. i don't know. but make it so that drivers can see it. if you can't do all of the other capital improvements, at least apply some stinking paint. so these people feel better and in terms of like how can you make it, they don't read signs, they read the roads. so you can have all the signals you want, but you've got to think about dieting it. you've got to think about taking away some of that, that parking have the park, the rec and park get involved. how about having tree plantings that go out that, you know, we don't have enough street trees in our city. we must have i know we've allocated budget for that. can we get street trees that come out and make these roads more narrow

that take some of these parking spaces that make it safer for people so it doesn't have to come out of sfmta's budget, but we've got to start getting crafty about how we make these streets safer for people all. thank you. thank you. next speaker, please. my name is david hooper. i've lived in mission terrace since 86. i want to throw a little cold water on this project since the line was extended in 1990, there were no tracks on that portion of our neighborhood. the line itself, my i. i did 33 years with muni. my last 12 years were at central controls, the train controller and a manager. the line through our community does not suffer for schedule. that's the first. the second is that it's only 12

years ago that we got the crosswalk with a stop sign at santa ynez to be able to cross to the park. we've been beating the drum about pedestrian safety , you know, why did the pedestrian cross the road and we've been trying to work with this so some things are great. improved islands, the bump outs at the various intersections, the effort to square off for the motorists at paulding and at baden, that hazard, the yellow hazard lights that's like are they going to work? that has to be seen. it's a very wide street . i saw the lights are on either side. but the big item for me is that painting the town red painting, the transit lines. red is it's nonsensical and the line doesn't need it for transit at the street on either side. we have nothing but left turns. we go, it's a t, you have to make a

left turn to go into the park, to go to the police station, to go to boxer stadium, you have to make a left turn at paulding or at baden going northbound because you are going on to a freeway overpass coming southbound. it's the same thing. we don't have any of the squared off intersections. the cars will still be in the red lane, the left lane. and it's monkey see, monkey do once others do it, people will do it. i don't see the value. thank you. thank you. any other speakers in the room, please open the phones at this time we'll move to remote public comment. not to exceed a total time of ten minutes. members of the public wishing to comment should dial star three to enter the queue. each speaker will have two minutes. moderator first speaker to. great. can you hear me now? yes, go ahead. great. david pilpel again. so on this item, while there is some more discussion of stakeholder engagement in the staff report,

it just raised some additional questions for me. if the community asks for various things, it didn't really commit more than just, oh, we're going to, you know, maybe look into it . so i'm i'm just concerned about the lack of meaningful discussion about stakeholder engagement in staff reports. it is not particularly clear to me why these changes are being pursued right now, given what staff said earlier about about staff availability and other things. this just doesn't seem like the highest priority to me. i did hear david hooper speak a few minutes ago and i heard him speak at the friday hearing on this that essentially that this project by itself will not improve j church reliability. and i agree with him. i think that is true. and he has a lot of experience since as a transit supervisor for central control dispatcher, train controller manager for it seems to me that

there really are far more important priorities right now. so i'm not sure that i would approve this particular action today as it is, staff already said that part of this will be back at your next meeting. and i agree with the speaker a few ahead of me that said that this really needs a comprehensive plan and this just seems like bits and pieces on the san jose avenue portion. 30s and it's a thanks and it's a follow up piece that church and market that's somewhat inconsistent with other things that could be happening there. bottom line is i'm not sure i would do this the way this is currently packaged. and i think the better solution is to harness. stacy ran decker's energy as a power source to supply power to muni and to all of us, because i was very impressed with her passion on this and other items. that's all. thanks for listening. thank you. no additional speakers.

i'll close public comment. colleagues, i think we had a couple of questions or comments earlier. director kahina did you want to? yeah speak. of course. well, thank you to staff and to all the community advocates that really brought this issue to the board. i think it was last year where where folks were really pounding the drums to make sure that we paid close attention to san jose avenue and to really focus on traffic calming in that in that corridor, particularly after mr. martin's collision. and i did have an opportunity to meet him and it was really challenging to see how he was just still navigating the streets, still bravely crossing the street, even though he almost perished after that collision. and it wasn't a fatality, but it was a hair away from being a fatality. so i just really want to thank the community for rallying for him and for his for his safety and

for so many of the folks are elder community members in d11 because we do have the highest percentage of seniors, highest percentage of families in that district. and so a corridor like this that serves the park, that serves schools, it's imperative that that we are doing our utmost to make sure it's safe for pedestrians. and so i did have a few clarifying questions about the project itself. i did see that. so the intersection where mr. martin was was hit was on paulding and san jose. and so i appreciate that we are looking at some solutions there, particularly the rapid flashing beacons. and i do see that within the i guess like the many options of treatments there. we also have left turn traffic calming as one of the pieces that we're considering implementing throughout that corridor. why are we not

implementing it there? thank you . so the challenge at paulding, unfortunately, is that there isn't the street space basically to add the additional space that you'd need to put the left turn traffic calming. it's basically a, you know, it's posts in the street or kind of a space in the street that that folks people to make a wider turn at at at a at at baden there is space there is extra lane space but at paulding the lanes are really you know basically as narrow as you can make them without squeezing in. there's not really room to squeeze in that kind of traffic calming. we can certainly, you know, sharpen our pencils and look back at it. it doesn't it's not really a legislative change. it's a project feature, but it's not something that requires an approval per se. but we can you know, we can certainly take another look and see if there's anything else we can do to further support that. yeah, i think that's it's critical, especially like paulding and

baden specifically. there there are ways that folks from the monterey boulevard or that that particular neighborhood connect to san jose then get on the freeway or cross into other neighborhoods. and so it's a they're both like feeder streets to the freeway. and so it's i think it's super important for those streets in particular to get the most amount of treatments as possible because folks are usually speeding to get across those streets at the other street that came to mind and i appreciate all the public comment on this too, because it's i think it's merited. sergeant john v young lane so i understand. and that you all did a study, so i appreciate you doing the study. but you know, i know the street very well. a lot of folks there's a there's a parking area for folks that frequent the park and it's cars are often going there like

frequently just to find parking to access the park, to go to the police station to use the diamond ring, like all these different activations that are that the park has. and this is one of the few parking areas is in that park. and so there are always cars going through there at various speeds, even though there's a police station right there. it's really interesting and so curious why why we're not proposing something there more substantial to create a safer passage for pedestrians. there yeah. and to your point, that is a busy well, you know, it has it has activity. people accessing the park and the one collision that we do have in the past five years at that intersection is actually somebody walking along san jose crossing sergeant john young lane. so it's, you know, in that crosswalk where they're crossing, sergeant john young versus crossing san jose and so we will be upgrading that

crosswalk from a kind of traditional kind of two lines kind of crosswalk to a continental crosswalk to improve the visibility. we've also so the that that intersection has full daylighting at this point to increase the visibility there. but in terms of the collision history, what we've seen is really just that one collision. that was somebody crossing john v young and it speaks to what you mentioned, which is that there is activity of people kind of driving in and out of sergeant john young. there are people crossing in. john young, so certainly we want to make sure that's as visible as possible. so again, like i think we really need to explore for making crossing across san jose, whether we're exploring it or studying whatever it is. but i do think we need some intervention there and i feel quite passionate about it considering i think also the members of the public also talked about this too. so there are tons of families that get serviced by that intersection. and i just i see it as as a miss if we're not really paying close attention to how that that

particular intersection can be safer. and i don't want to wait for a collision to happen to make the call. so i would encourage staff to really explore that thoroughly. if we're true to our visions or goals, the other piece, let's see if i want to let me see. i think those were the two main pieces that i wanted to bring forth to the board, and i know there is quite a lot of energy for folks to eliminate left turns on paulding. but i can understand why why that's something that the i don't know if you all want to explain that a little bit more, why we opted not to eliminate left turns. there yeah, it mostly comes down to the street grid in that neighborhood. there's only a few streets that actually cross to 80. it's not a regular street grid where streets go through. there's not a lot of full kind of four leg intersections. so when you restrict the left turn

there, it's not like the mission or somewhere where you might just make or downtown where you might make three rights to be able to access your destination. it requires a lot more foresight to know, oh, i guess i need to turn left here and turn right there and if you miss your opportunity to do that, you're kind of in a tricky spot and there is a commercial corridor immediately north of paulding that we want to make sure people can access and not make that too difficult for the small businesses that are there. so those are the primary considerations. we, you know, we like restricting lefts in some cases to preserve safety or protect safety and keep transit moving. but this is one location where we think the circulation was a little bit bigger consideration. and just to state my position on this, i fully support this project. of course, i want more on that street. this is a neighborhood that doesn't really get its due, its investments. and so i appreciate the level of effort and care that the team went through to make sure that they were connecting with all the members of the public. and i understand

that not everyone got 100% what they wanted, but this is close enough for me to support this. thank you. vice chair cajina director. so and thank you for the presentation. i like a lot of the graphics and i'm trying to make it brief because it's like 6:00. i just to really two questions. i love that balboa park playground and also my daughter's always go there now practicing various different kind of sports. so i'm just curious of why you chose to have a stop sign on santa ines crosswalk. whereas you know, on the sergeant john vision, you just have a no mark crosswalk. yes. thank where? i'm sorry. that's actually where exactly all the parents would go with their three year old toddler that's like that would be the one they will cross. yeah. totally understand the question. as a parent of a three year old

toddler, i totally get that. but the main there's kind of a couple main reasons, one of which is that sergeant john v young does not continue as a street once it crosses san jose. so the only kind of case where sergeant john v young would be your most direct path of travel is if you were located immediately be kind of to the east of it's not a through street, whereas santa ynez is a through street that, you know, kind of circulates into the neighborhood. santa ynez is also the location of a j church stop. so that's where people are getting on and off the train. and we want to make sure that's safe, accessible place to have a stop sign. so those are you know, it's that circulation element and it's the it's the train stop. so is it too much to ask for having that? number three, you have that blue dot there to actually have some sort of flashing on the marking on the street? i just want to make sure that we don't have another our toddler got run over by a

car and killed. so. absolutely. so most of the time we will take the shortest cut because kids, we just want to get them to the playground as quick as as possible. and you know, i mean, like, you know, that's that's the you know, can we do that? you know, i get that completely. so the reason that we made the recommendation is that if we are going to mark this as a crosswalk and say this is a place you should cross this, you know, right now what the street tells you is you should cross at santa ynez or at ocean because those are marked crosswalks. they have a signal or they have a stop sign. they have the infrastructure that sort of invites you to cross. right now, if we were to add a crosswalk at at at sergeant john v young, we'd really want to add more than just a crosswalk because as we've seen at other places along the corridor, once you have a basic crosswalk, that's not enough by itself, right? so we would probably need to do a flashing beacon. we definitely need to do curb ramps which don't exist currently. we might need to do bulbs to really make

it work well or a signal, you know, there's all these additional infrastructure pieces. so it isn't necessarily a decision between nothing and a little bit. it's sort of like, do we make a significant investment in this intersection, which, you know, isn't a through street, doesn't have high pedestrian volumes right now, right now, our recommendation is to channel people to that, that nearest intersection 350ft away. but we understand that, you know , if you're trying to get across the street, there's the playground, just get out of your car. we get it. i totally get it. that that's that's an attractive place to cross. so i would just weigh, you know, this is a location with no injuries. we have a lot of locations in the city with high numbers of injuries that could use that same investment. it would probably be, you know, $600,000 or so to make the kind of basic curb ramps, flashing beacons and striping that, you know, a lot of other intersections have competing needs. but that's that's sort of a policy choice to weigh. and that's why we made our recommendation. but it's not, you know