again return to we'reing the board to approve today, which is to authorize the director of transportation to execute the contract with wsp, a long joint venture for consultant services again for an initial five year to extend for one year for a total of ten years, and an amount not to exceed $30 million. and again, that $30 million you might have seen there were previous slides that, that referenced $36 million. and after consulting with our, our train control project committee we adjusted that down on their advice, and to, to help control costs. so we have the reflected amount in the new in the version you see before you, which is $30 million. and with that, i'm happy to take any questions you may have. thank you so much, i think, colleagues, what i'd like to do is go ahead andaú take public comment and then come to the board questions and discussion. so are tre anymenters on this item? 12 i have some

speaker cards. alicia flores directors, my name is alicia flores, and i'm a staff representative with ippt local 21, we've been in talks with sfmta over this psc, and we understand the need for the contract and the benefits it will provide to the community and our public tnsit>b system. as a union we want to we want communiters to benefit from the upgrades to the train control system. and we realize there are challenges that come with building this program from end to end, and that it. as it stands, we firmly believe in the needtruly staff up as a city, and our understanding is that the agency has signaled that t ointments, but we know the sco work will require ongoing in-house support. under the current psc implementation plan, there is no training on the design of the train control crucial piece of planning for future upgrades. local 21 represents sfmta electrical engineers and there has not been internal outreach on the

project, nor has there been outreach to the other city agencies. it's crucial sfmta plans to pull local 21 employees into the fold during the duration of this psc for trainings and knowledge transfer that would allow future contracting out needs for design toted. the union and the agency have yet to meet and reach mutual resolution regarding permanent positions and sourcing the work through current sfmta in a position to ask the board to direct the agency to one, commit to making positions permanent, and two reach an agreement with the positions sourcing work in-house and identifying training for knowledge transfer opportunities before moving forward. thank you for your conside thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. thanks again, chair amanda eken and record, she and her with team folds, i'm really enjoyed the committee meeting. recently, and we had a very good discussion about it, i hope we have a video of it, but i it's

important, and i can't call myself an expert, but i think 54 years of riding the new york city subway gives me something. and i've experienced kbtc modern kbtc in new york on several of their lines. and, as i think back to how old our system is, i remember i think it was in 99 early 99, i went to the, subway station. 33rd and seventh and got a metro card with a $4 fun pass, unlimited subway until 4 a.m. the next day. that was leading edge then. now we're moving away from that because we can use our phones and our credit cards and the like. so this system with the floppy disks was was leading edge at one ti-7me. but now now it's beyond it's timeally want to think about what

date it is, consider that in new york that some of the lines are using signals dating to the 1930s, and they have artisansrk, in shops, who fabricate parts individually because nobody makes 1930 signals anymore, so we'reing this year and so they're putting in cbtc in new york on, on the g train with the big bus bridge going on right do we sell this to the board of supervisors? was a way that i, as a member of the public, could engage on that. thank you. thanks for your comment. any other speakers on item 12? the train control item? okay. seeing none, we can close public comment and i now call on chair liefer of the cac to provide the cac report. he's joining us virtually. yeah. hi. thank you, we did get the a

similar presentation from dan howard last week. and our recommendation is as follows the sfmta, cac recommends that the sfmta board of directors approve the staff recommendation for the chosen consultant for the train control upgproject, our vote was unanimous we do obviously have concerns about, the agency's ability to deliver on large, high value projects, we've already seen the value of this project balloon from 500 million to $700, we're encouraged by the due diligence that's being done to make sure that this is delivered on time and on budget. thank you. that that concludes your report. yes. okay. thank you. mr. lifer. i'm just wondering not to put you on the spot, but any of the issues that were raisedyq around any

of the labor or union issues? is there any feedback you want to share with us on those topics raised? no yeah. no. there was that did not come up in our discussion. okay, okay. thank you for your presentation and for the resolution today. that's very helpful. you betfor the cac from my colleagues? okay. thank you. and now we can go to questions and discussion with the project staff who would like to begin. i'll go ahead. oh thank you, director. go ahead, and my question is actually around, what you referenced, which is what our public commenter referenced around small business enterprise and local business, local business enterprise engagement and kind of this contract as a home. so if you could speak to that, that would be great. i know you have a very ambitious goal for the project as a whole, but this contract

specifically, would you like to speak to that, mr. howard? yes. thank you, director, for the question, we are confident that that we'll be able thill be able to meet the, the 15% sb goal. in factthey've committed to 16% and in their proposal, they've given us specifics, about which firms will be providing sets of services. and one of the things that i think was particularly hearteningut that proposal was that they're relying on some of their sb subcontractors. for significant engineering support. in fact, iengineer the lead vehicle engineer, for the project team comes from an sb contractor. so they're going in the design conversations and so i have every confidence that they'll be able to meet those those goals with the suite of staff that they propose. i think tha went into kind of a larger part of the evaluation of this, of this consultant, that the overall strength of the of the

project team that they brought and the quality of people that they offered, was really high in competition with, with the other bids and the sb, contribution to that was substantial. and not a token. by any means. they eysignificant contributors. okay. and, the specific thing since, they'reay, i have have we have staff met with the this yet, yes. we so, well, let me clarify that, for the this contract is still pending. the civil service commission approval. so, the unions were given the opportunity to discuss this they declined, we did discuss the other contract with local 21. the supplier contract? before it went to the civil service commission for approval. and we did discuss the positions that would be part of the

project with them on a couple occasions. okay. and just lastly, you mentioned, that you just did the amount down and just clarifying which amount that is, that's, not to exceed amount is nowlion. correct. the staff originally proposed the not to exceed amount to be $36 million. and then following discussion with the mta board committee on the train control project, we adjusted it down to 30 million, which is what this request reflects. got it. okay thank you, madam chair. thank you director hines. i'd now like to call on director heminger, and also just acknowledge director director henderson for your service on the train control upgrade projectflections from those committee discussions, you want to share for the benefit of the rest of the board. as we consider this item, we would appreciate it. go ahead, heminger. thank you, madam chair. and, director henderson can chime in right after me, and, dan, could you

bring back slidej> number three? because i think this is sort of the tale of the tape. this one? no there you go. as dan inding an unusual approach here because the green and the yellow are usually one contract, and in th splitting them up for i think, on the whole good reason, but that places a premium on us being our own general contractor. and for any of you who've done a kitchen remodel, you know, that you brought you bring some heartache to your homestead when you're your owntor. and there are ways to mitigate that, in home as well as here at the officeultant contract that's before you today, because this

is a big job there are lots of things that can go wrong, and i think we red to be in a position where we're relying on consultant assistance for a good chunk of the work. now, ideally, the things that this consultant will do, is help. upgrade the, the capabilities of our this is not just a construction contract. it's a maintenance contract as well. so there is going be a lot of work to be done. and i think our committee would prefer that we do as much of that work in-house as possible, once we have the system built, and finally, i would emphasize that this particular consultant that is the feature of the contract before you today has considerable experience with all the suppliers. so no matter

which supplier we end up picking, they'll have experience and existing relationships with them. so there shouldn't be a whole lot of learning curve going on, there should be an ability to hit the ground running, i will say we didn't have any discussion on these labor issues at our committee and, to the extent that we could provide any other assistance, i think we'd be happy to in terms of reviewing the issues. but hope is that there is plenty of work to go aroundverybody and especially long term, that we build more in-housef& capability, so that we don't have to hire, consultants as much or as often. thank you, madam chair. director henderson. thanhair and thank you dan, for the presentation and for the, teacup committee meet i

think it was last week, i thought it was a very helpful. and you know, educational discussion think the labor and training came up at end. so i do think it's appropriate for us to sort of dive into that a little bit more at our next committee meeting because it was at the meeting that, that we got a little bit of a chance to talk about it, what i did want to share with, the my fellow directors is that i thought that it was really clear how, how the team has provided some background and, you know, shown us how we gotce. but i thought that the vision for how we avoid this moment again in the future was also really clear. so, you know, i love vintage things, but i think is, really important that you all are incorporating into the strategy how we don't run into the running off of floppy disk situation again in what is

it, whatever and so i think that that was, a point that was woven throughout the presentation and certainly makes me very confident that the way that this pr while unconventional in terms of the style of the proc us get to a point where we are buying the best value, the optimal, outcome for the writers of our system and for this agency in the long term. and i also just really appreciate how, all are being to identify other funding sources. i know that it's, you know, the fiscal we cannot avoid, and we talk about it with nearly every item but i think that it's going to be really important for us to be able to identify sources that will allow those discretionary sources that you mentioned to be used for other projects so that you can, spread the spread the wealth and the

benefit across the city in many ways. and so i just i wanted to say thank you to the, to the team so far, committee meeting was, was really i thought a very helpful and robust discussion. and i look forward before our, supplier contract comes to us in a couple of months. thank you director henderson. and thank you both again for your service on that committee, di tarloff. did you have any comments on this one? okay , okay. well, is there a motion to approve? i'll move the item there a second. i'll second. thank you. please call the role secretary silva on the motion to approv heminger heminger i, director henderson henderson i and director hines i kinsey i director tarlov i tarlow vice-chair egan i that item is approved. thank you directors call the next item. next item places you on item 13 adopting a resolution supporting the no turn on

red regulations to signalized intersections with high levels of pedestrian activity to improve working conditions and safety. ricardo with the sfmta. i am the city traffic engineer. i will be presenting a sort of update to a discussion that we had earlier at the vision zero committee meeting of february. in terms of the no turn on an ongoing discussion that we've been having for the for the past five years or so. i will be presenting kind of like where we are right now and where we could be going into the future, this is actually a pretty good story in the sense that san francisco is leading the way nationally in term expansion of no turn on red if you look historically at what's happened, no turn on red is kind of like an interesting topic, and we can talk about it for a long time, but i'll keep it very brief. it used to be that the united states was divided kind of into western and

eastern states and the eastern states when the automobile waswhen the automobile rules were created and decided that it was not a vehicles to turn, when the light was red, they baslyf the light is red, the vehicle should remain stationary, and then the western states actually, like california, decided that it was okay for vehicles to turn, if it was safe to do so these these these became known as the easte what happened in the 1970s is that the federal government intervened and decided that based on energy conservation grounds, because of that, the energy crisis at that time, they told all thenge their rules and adopt the western rule, which allowed no turn onent that this would reduce energy consumption that there would if it was not necessary. the only place in the united states that resisted this change was new york city, and they've still to this day, have the opposite rule that we have in california which is it's de facto, not allowed ton red, to turn right on red unless

there's a sign allowing it after these rules were passed there was a lot of debate aboutas a good or bad idea from a safety standpoint. the profession was divided. the federal government a couple of times made studies, and, you know, came to the conclusion that the change was positive and not created a significant safety concerns, sa being a city that's more dense, like new with concerns about pedestrian safety, has always had this as something that we've debated, in past years, we've had studies done by mta staff, board of supervisors have have requested studies looking at this issue most recently in 2019 this board made a request to staff to look at this issue zero efforts, part of our efforts to improve safety, the mta and the department of public health, which are joint partners in in vision zero, decided to look at this issue more deeply because a the

data that we were looking at was kind of anecdotal. there was a lot of, lack of certainty about exactly what the nature of the problem was, the extent the problem. so what we did is we had staff look at all the crashes in san francisco during a five year period. we actually went through the police reportscorrect narrative to understand what was happening, because t if you just look at a police report at a summary level, you might be missing and even some of the reports might be incorrect in the term in terms of determining whether the light was red or not. so we did that study that study then led to a recommendation on the part of the mta staff to doing an expansion of proactive expansion into the tenderloin. the heart of the high injury network, where we felt it was a good idea for vehicles not to be tried to turn remain stationary at a red light looked at the results of that study. we were looking at things such as compliance, what would happen with the increased number of be

turning on green? there was a concern that that could createay concern in terms of if you don't allow theon red, they're going to green, safety concern was studied. we felt that the results from the tenderl i'll share later, then to a tenderloin haar southerly to south of market, and to places like north beachhinatown. we will now be doing a proactive area wide, no turn on study at theame time, in 2020 2023 there was a board of supervisors resolution. there was a petition circulated online that hadeople signing it, indicating a desirehave a ci on red. and that that's been helpful in the sense of creating energy and around turn on red. and we're here at the board to kin give you an update on where we are with with that. and in the process of already expanding so this is one of the results thatleased during the many times in about this. i'm not saying that this is kind of like our cxplain why it took us so long, to consider banning turns on red after the 1970s. there was repeated

statusions that this was not a problem, that only a very limited number of crashes related related to turn onnd justify having, a particular kind of overwhelmingx s for a ban on turn, turn red. but there's always people that are concerned that this is not the right thing to allow. why is that? i think we've all been in situations where we're trying to cross the street and somebody will be doing a turn on red and they us off. they don't pay attention, they're not uulooking, or they may end up blocking the crosswalk, and in those kind ofs, the sense is that the vehicle has kind of taken over the pedestriance at a time in which pedestrians are given a walk indication. so if you look at this diagram of a typical turn on red, the vehicle is focused on looking at what and may not be looking at the pedestrian that's startin other side and may have positioned themselves in order to get thataffic. they may have positioned in a way that they're blocking the crosswalk. and so now the pedestrian has to both make eye contact with the driver, making the turn on red make sure that they're seen and

in some situations have to go around or behind the car, and that can create some problems as well, the no turn on red obviously is, is is covered under the california specific requirements that require the vehicle to come to a complete stop, proceed into the crosswalk only when it's clear to do so t about, particularly where people anticipate the no turn on red, where the vehicle will do a rolling right on red, and they don't come to stop at all. now, those situations are not really a problem with the no turn on red law. they're a problem with red light running of sorts. people red light. and so they're kind of assuming that because they can turn right on r of roll through the intersection as as i said we did a study because we wanted to get an idea ofctly what the what the magnitude of the problem was. prior studies had indicated that about 1% of crashes, injury crashes were related to turn on reds, our review of the police reports confirm that that's about the neighborhood of the injury reported crashes about 1% of the total of 15,979

incidents. now the vast majority of those turned out to be related to pedestrians. so there was a question are turns on red involving bicycling or cars on cars? now, some of them do, but 80% involve pedestrians. so we feel that the turn on rate issue is really a pedestrian safety issue. of the pedestrian total, 2.5% of pedestrian injury crashes are turn on red now. it's not an overwhelming number. we're you know, even if we even if this banned and people followed the rule, we would be talking about 2.5% of injuries. but 2.5% of injuries is.5 of injuries. it's like we're trying to do things to reduce injuries in san francisco, 2.5% might seem like a low number, but to the people injured, it's a significant, issue. now, the vast majority of the turn on red crashes happened in the high injury network. we believe that that is highly correlated with pedestrian activity naturally, where there's more people, where there's more traffic, where there's more activity, you tend to going to have more conflicts that can be associated with turns on red and

the thing to keep in mind, again, just because the turn on red is banned, does not remove the fact that a lot of crashes are due to when a vehicle has a green light and the pedestrian walking parallel the walk indication, that is the majority of the crashes. it's by a factor of about 3 to 1. and we saw that when we looked at the reports, there was definitely a pattern where a lot of the crashes were related to turns on green, and those are things things to try to mitigate those issues, such as leading pedestrian intervals or, a traffic calming treatments for turns. this is aummary of the tenderloin study. i won't go into much of the details but basically because of the because of the results from the pilot we were confident that it wasn't leading to the negative side effects orded consequences of banning turns on red. and so we felt that it was a good idea to continue to expand them citywide proactively. and after a period of time, we were able to get an idea of what the crash history was. so one of theurns on red

would increase crashes because you would again have more people turning on green. and we did not see that in the tenderloin data. after line in 2022, we actually had fewer crashes related to right turns than we had in 2021 that number increased in 2023. so basically we're at a at a static point. what i would conclude from this chart is that the problem has not become worse, if you look at the pandemic kind of affecting dlook at 2018 or 2019 and you look at the 2023 number, it's slightly down. but it's kind of comparable. so banning turns on red does not increase crashes, which was one of the concerns that people had, at least in the context of the tenderloin, because of/ the need to provide guidance around this issue. and we've had trainings to staff and discussions and seminars where we've indicated to staff that turns on red now should be of the de facto approach. so in the was let's only do turns on red where it's really needed. like if there's a

substantial documented problem we'll do a turn on red. if there's a real significant issue, we'll do a turn on red. so in the past, for example there's no turn on red along market street because of the wide crosswalks. there's no turn on overall it was a was a one off approach. now it's the opposite. it's people are being taught to think about like, why is there a reason not to do a turn on red at this location? is there any harm or any problem with doing a turn on red? are there are there benefits thatgained? and so it's a different way of looking at the same issue board of supervisors passed a resolution, as i noted in 2023, that asked the agency to look at a city wide ban on turns on red and to implement this banned as projects allowed, this legislation was very instrumental in kind of providing a political push and support for the agency to continue in its direction prior to this, board of supe resolution, staff had kind of taken it on its own

to quite gotten that kin larger policy making body. and i think we really appreciate the support that we've gotten policy wise from the board of supervisors there was also a companion, a companion, petition, online petition that was circulated that received thousands of sign all gotten emails over the over the period of time on this issue. so there's been, strong support for the agency to do more proactive work around no turn on red, which has been helpful. so the situation currently now is summarized in this map. the area highlighted in blue is what was done in the tenderloin. the areas to the east shown in red is what is currently being worked on and will be worked on for the next year or so. that's the downtown expansion both in the north and south of market and that involves a project funded through state funds in which we'll be installing, no turn on reds basically at every

rs we're using, prioritization in terms of deciding where we're going to do these projects. obviously, the tenderloin was a very logical place to start out with having a concentration of pedestrian activity that we're all familiar with, but we decided to make pedestrian activity kind of the fundamental issue because no turn on reds affect pedestrians the most in terms of crosswalk blockage. in terms of this issue of lack of awareness of a pedestrian starting to cross when a vehicle is attempting to do the turn on red, we felt that areas where there's a lot of pedestrians walking should get a no turn on red, so that vehicles, do not do those kind of, or attempt those kind of turns in situationslikelihood that it'll create a conflict for somebody trying to cross the high inj was as, as stated before, was correlated. so obviously because of the vision zero program we're targeting those areas, as well. but we're not just limiting ourselves to the high injury network as we've done

with other vision zero programs. we're also doing areas that are not in the high injury network such as chinatown, because we feel that those areas would benefit from the change from a pedestrian activityhat i wanted to talk about was leading pedestrian intervals, which is something that we've been doing recently because of the problem with turns on green and the literature and the guidance, professional guidance has come when you do a leading pedestrian interval which is give pedestrians a walk, you do kind of want to have a no turn on red because you don't want the vehicles to use that leading pedestrian interval to cut the off. if you can imagine the logic of the regulation, if leading pedestrian interval, when a vehicle sitting at a red light and the pedestrian gets the walk, the cross traffic has that to the motorist that's also a perfect time for them to attempt a turn on red. and so at the time in which we're trying to prioritize the pedestrian, for them to be able to cross the street we would be having a vehicle at that same time attempt a turn at the same time. so a leading

pedestrian interval is something doing at most intersections in san francisco. and it's another reason, i think, why the no turn on red from a proactive standpoint is a idea at this point. now in san francisco, we kind of sometimes even when we're in agreement about general safety matters, like there's disagreements about the extent of like what we should be doing. so there's a lot of people that are interested in us becoming like new york city, basically a city where the default is no turn on red. and the exception is the allowance of a turn on red. the, the concerns that we have is that given that we are in california, where the practice is legal and it has been legal for generations we're concerned that we want to make sure that people become, that they accept the fact that now the no red will be much more common, and then gradually there will be this kind of change in the way that people perceive the areas that have red and, and change the way that they drive. and think

about the turn on red so that it becomes something that's more second nature, we're concerned with issues typically in the profession where we talk about having to install traffic control devices that command respect. and so we're concerned about a situation where we would install a no turn on red sign, from just from a policy perspective, we're just going to do them everywhere, even in places where there's very little activity. we're concerned about those kind of situations whereublic is seeing that sign and feeling like the city has kind of not thought about this. well that that the city is just kind of being too heavy, heavy handed, not thoughtful and doing regulations in a of, restricting the ability to do a safe maneuver according to state law. so we need to have we need to haveompliance support on the part of the public in the sense of them understanding why we're doing these rules and do them in a way that the public will is thoughtful and targeted, and that's why we feel that it's better to, at this point in time a concentrate on locations

with high pedestrian activity as adopt a policy that says we will install this regardless of the need or the activity of the area. so next steps at this this discussion today the board can decide to be more or less restrictive in the whatstaff is proposing at this point, we are being as aggressive as we can. as noted we're expanding using a state grant. i think if i look at the united states at this point, there's only a handful of cities that have discussed having this degree of banning of turns on red. i would include seattle in this conversation, boston has come up with a policy very similar to san francisco's at this point, washington dc discussed having a6: ban in the dc area on all turns on red, but they have had problems getting the funding for it because of their unique political situation, but absent those kind of discussions i think we're the city that's implementing this in the most proactive and aggressive way at this point which i think is good because i think we're being seen by other cities as a potential kind of

test case to see how how it can work out we will be in training staff and again, when we get requests, when looking at a project, the no turn on red will now be seen differently. we'll be as a kind of a project, a project element that can be added to projects in a corridor basis. quick builds or when we get requests for safety improvements, we will also be adding them to other capital projects as, as i stated we will have to continue to monitor this issue. the tenderloin was a kind of unique test case in the sense it's the best case scenario. lots of activity you know, very dense. i think there might be other situations where the, the, the regulations may have less compliance or may create new ring the feedback that we get, what we s, the what what you as well perceived, in getting that idea of like, okay this this is working out. this is still the right approach. let's continue to expand, and then we will also be looking at

other issues that that, that that have been discussed, does this impact transit in any way? does it increase transitncrease the delay for emergency services? we've had those discussions with the fire maintenance and future expansion projects this point, we've funded the main, main expansion that we'll be working on for the next year and a half, and we will be applying for that same grant that we got to do the downtown expansion. and we're we're thinking of using that grant to expand from the tenderloin to the north, to the west, and to the look at this kind of center of gravity of the traffic signal system of the traffic signals are in the missionouth of market. and northeast quadrant. and by the time we're all done, this entire area in the northeast quadrant will be a no turn on red area. that's beneficial in the sense that it will provide the public a very clear in this area, that's the default. so again and again people will see these signs. this entire area then will be more uniform, the ne

expansions after we do this kind of core quadrant would be the neighborhood commercial streethat, that we all know, know valley chestnut, clement, those streets as well have a lot of activity and have some signals. we would be also doing them as part of either a proactive project or as part of individual projects or requests. so, as, as we continue to do these projects for the next few years, you'll know that we're expanding the use of no turn on red. we're making it the default as as has been requested. we're doing this on a city wide basis. i was requested from the board of supervisors. we're not limiting this just to downtown.to make that clear. we will be expanding into the neighborhoods, but we lt that it was a better idea to start out creating this massive kind of center of gravity and turn on red area in the downtown area and then we'll be having fu this even further from where we are at this point, in my profession, i've seen conversations evolvever time for example, around daylighting

or parking removals. when i started we were told usually not to remove parking unless it was. and then in 2019 the board of supervisors told us to actuallya proactive basis. and then here we are in 2023, we should remove parking at every intersection. so this gradual evolution of the profession, culture, people's perception of what is acceptable in terms of driving or design, i think may this may start that conversation. maybe other cities will join ussz, and then we may be more in the future in a does california want to ban no turn on reds joining other cities and countries that do that, do we want to take that that step further from where we are today, so i think it will be an evolving conversation. i think, like i said, i think we're doing as much as we can given the funding that we've obtained and we will continue to try to get additional funding6] to continue this project proactively. that's my presentationv!. okay. thank you so much. mr. olya, both for this

presentation but also for, your career in service of improving the safety in our streets and leveraging so much of that history. in your own experience, in your presentation, it's really greatly the board. thanks. colleagues, i just wanted to provide a touch of additional context on this before, and then i would like to go to public comment before our discussion, as mr. olya referenced, this came up in the vision zero d director hines attended, at that time. we were hearing from mr. olya on this. also, the board of supervisors was weighing in. there's a lot of attention with the petition, and we wanted we sort of made the request to bring this item as for this full board to kind of hear and discuss, this is teed up as an action item today, but i want to say that we don't need to act today. that's sort of important to, to discu recently, like with west portal or here. the itemake our feedback. come back at a later date so there's no just

confirmed with the streets director. there's no sort of imperative for us to act today. it's not going to slow down staff's work. proceeding the program. if we want to really have some meaningful different options as it pertains to no, turn on red and act at a later date. so i just want to set that sort of context. there are some really important and even sort of philosophical questions that areised in the presentation around how intuitive a different approach to this might b to a different one, or what do we think is the right sort policy for this city, especially given what the board of supervisors has waited on? so i just wanted to set that context for our conversation. i want i want us to feel like we have some good time to discuss this topic because it is an approached a number of times. but this board has not acted on in my in my six years on the board. so with that, i'm going to open up public comment and then we can get into our board speaker card for steven lawson. good afternoon. i'm a longtime san

francisco resident and frequent pedestrian, and also driver. i want to thank sfmta staff for the great information and presentation. i believe this resolution is a step in the right with the resolution for 8123 at the board of supervisors, right turn on red pedestrians and cyclists and for drivers record crashes and injuries, pedestrian stress matters. walkability is more than survivability in terms of driving. aspire to be zen drivers, but a line of cars behind you at a right turn on red puts drivers under pre that can lead to rash decisions that may on red leads to a more thoughtful and deliberate approach to navigating intersections. i believe that

the expansion plan should be extendo include all intersections with right side bike lanes, even if they are not already included in the scope. and here's why. because right turn on red effectively turns crosswalks into right turn lanes. this creates barriers to pedestrians, but also tends to block off cyclists who are trying to make it throughse intersections. and ultimately what is the benefit of the right turn on red? a few minutes, a few seconds off of a trip, and that's not worth it. thanks for your comment. next speaker please. speaker card for vladimir. vlad. good afternoon. board. my

chair of the hayes valley transportation and planning committee, and i'm here to i'm here today to encourage the board to adopt a full no turn on red policy for all signalized intersections throughout the city, as we know, collisions occur in part where there is ambiguity in our roadways and traffic rules by going through a case by case basis ande@cemeal approach. my concern is that through this no turn on red policy, we are inviting ambiguity into that equation,p so i hope that the board can take a more holistic approach to a proven solution, as to a case by case basis. and then, given the presentation, another thought is with this implem, i hope that there's outreach with the drivers that are from out of town, typically, you know, a lot o uber drivers are from sacramento, central valley. they're not familiar with the streetscape, you know, and even seasoned taxi medallion holders as mta can make sure that when this is implemented in

the dense part of the north eastern section of the city, that there's commensurate outreach to these modes of rideshare. but again, st right direction. and thank you guys for, considering this topic today. your comment next speaker, please. few more. speaker cards. paul weimer, carol bronson, melina cabada, janet penley., directors. my name is paul wermer, i was going to make a lot of comments, but i realized that several of the issues of the intersections wered in the original presentation. i will say, in the past three months i have been in three situations where i have had to going because someone did right on red, as twice. once today, when a waymo pulled out without adequate clearance, making a right on red. and i was not speeding, there was a gap because the people in front of me were going faster. and he took advantage of it but didn't

have room and i saw a right turn on red with the leading pedestrian indicator, the guy indeed saying, oh themissed the child because the grandmother pulled the child back. so absolutely need right turn on red or no right turn on red. i'm really concerned that we're not discussing habitual behavior. if we have some that are permitted and some that are not, drivers will develop habits based on what they use and now you have inconsistent habits in drivers. that creates confusion. so i would urge clearly in implementation because you can't do it all at once, but it needs to be an implementation that is clear, that is going and it needs to be involvehaney and whoever replaces, assembly member ting andr wiener to

get the changessaó?ry at the state level in this next legislative cycle, so that we're not held up by a state law from doing the right thçings. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please. good afternoon my name is janet penley and i live in the lower nob between two major commuter streets, bush and pine, i've long been a proponent of no on red. i lived in manhattan for many years, so i'm used to that, i will say i i walk a lot. rare is the day that i don't have a close call with a driver crosswalk. they creep into the crosswalk. they're always looking for that break

traffic and paying no attention whatsoever to the pedestrian who has a walk. it seems that drivers take turning on. i think of it as a privilege, and it's a privilege that gets abus day. i believe. no turn on red in the proposed high traffic area. everywhere, but at this point in time that it would be a great start in making our streets safer fore. thank you for your comment. next speaker please. good afternoon. my name is carol brownson. i district two and i get around san francisco on, sidewalks and streets with my little mobility scooter and on muni, it rides on the muni

very nicely. so, i have gone through the details of this proposal and the allowing right turn on continue across most of the city thatta staff are proposing means that i just can't cross safely in those intersections. now first of all, i see that everybody realizes and no longer has an illusion tha drivers stop before the crosswalk, and of course, when they're coming up to turn right on red, they go right up to look around. and that does make that nice advanced stop line pretty darn useless, doesn't it? and oh, the zebra crossing waste of paint. so what about my personal view? so i'm cross and a driver does this and i'm coming across the street and i'm halfway there and i can't get to the curb ramp

that will get me safely onto the sidewalk. so i just what what do i do? i don't know, and if i'm coming, the other way, they're not looking in my direction. so they're liable to take me out and i have been hit lightly because as you see, i'm still standing, on pine, which is of course, not on the proposal. so almost all of the streets that i see on that map will still. so i hope that, getting around. excuse me. san francisco on a mobility device can be made safer for everyone. thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker, please.kw good afternoon. chair eken chair tumlin and directors. my name is

melina mckee walk. i'm walk san francisco's campaign associate, every time each of us steps into the crosswalk, we are hoping, trusting, praying that drivers will see and respect us when drivers are allowed to turn on a red light. at the same time, a pedestrian has a walk sign especially in busy high traffic areas where drivers are often be a dangerous or even deadly situation. and as vehicles get bigger, heavier and more powerful, the stakes are even higher for pedestrians in the crosswalk. so it's essential for sfmta to do everytng they can to minimize the chance of conflicts between pedestrians and drivers. for many years, walk san francisco has pushed for a citywide no turn on r to reduce the chances of conflict in the crosswalk. we support the no turn on red policy being proposed today as a ke the solution to more high injury intersections with high destrian activity. the most successful vision zero cities are layering every possible solution and bringing these solutionsscale to reduce the

chances and severity of crashes. we should all be safe whe are crossing the street, and no turn on red can help make that asan francisco. thank you for your leadership on vision zero today and moving forward. thank you, thank you. next speaker, please. h afternoon. my name is rachel clyde, and i'mh e 8á francisco bicycle coalition and representing00 members, i'm here today in support of the policy and asking the board to move swiftly in implementing this across the city as intended by the board of supervisors in 2021. we worked reallylosely with the tenderloin traffic safety task force and tl community members to implement e th 20 mile per hour speed limit and no turn on red policies at all intersections. and this has seen amazing success. the data shows that close calls between drivers and pedestrians has decreased by 80%, and there is a 92% compliance rate among people who drive the policy, alongside many other traffic calming interventions, is one of the

primary reasons that street safety conditions improving in the tenderloin in the past few years, we have that people turning on red lights is one of the top five most dangerous driving behaviors, for people walking and biking and accounting for 20% of injury crashes in our city. we hear about these horrific accounts from our members about drivers turning on red blocking the intersections, cutting them off as they cross. and this creates a very chaotic and stressful situation. while walking and biking in our city, and can make it really dangerous and scary and deter people from choosing to walk or bike, no. turn on red will create more predictable driving behaviors that are good for everyone and especially for children, families, seniors, and people with disabilities. we're seeing major cities across the country implementing no turn on red policies, and we want san francisco to join that list so the san francisco bicycle coalition urges you to adopt a resolution supporting proactive, city wide expansion of no turn on red. thank you, thank you. next speaker please.eç

is it not on? hi. board members, luke bornheimer, i urge you to amend the to present a real city wide, no turn on red policy for every signalized intersection in the city for approval at your next meeting in september. and endorse the city wide policy. doing this will significantly decrease the workx] and resources spent studying, analyzing, and proposing individual intersections, and, more critically, increase safety for all people, including car drivers and especially children seniors, people with disabilities and people who

walk bike or use mobility devices. allowing turns on red increase all turn crashes by 23%. crashes involving people walking by up to 107%, and crashes involving people biking by up to 100%. in part because, quoting us dot drivers stopped for a red light or looking left for a gap in traffic and do not see people walking or biking coming from their right. put simply allowing dangerous for everyone. meanwhile, no turn on red has been shown to decrease, drivers failing to yield to people walking at red lights by 92% and at green lights really critically. at green lights it has decreased, failing to yield by 59%. counter to the thought th lights more dangerous to people, it's also decreased conflict between cars by 97%. s that 92% of drivers comply with

no turn on red signs, close calls between drivers and people walking decreased by 80%, and crosswalks being blocked or encroached by cars during a red light decreased by 72%. our city faces a roadway safety crisis, with over 30 people being killed and over 500 people seriously injured per year and we need to quickly implement proven policies and infrastructure to make our streets safer. a true citywide no turn on red policy is a perfect example of the types of policies we should be implementing. i urge you to direct staff to present a citywide no turn on red policy at your meeting thank you. thanks for your comment. next speaker, please. hi. good afternoon. board members, barnett brzezinski, district two. i want to echo all my previous commenters in support turn on red policy. don't apply it on a case by case basis. just make it a blanket ban citywide. for really? two reasons, from a personal level, the pedestrian land use analysis in the deck is

just erroneous. i'm sorry. you have pine bush, franklin, gough numerous areas near schools, lincoln way near golden gate park, the entire panhandle. none of these are as pedestrian land uses on the map. i we're trying to say here. there are pedestrians walking all along these places, all times of the day, and night. none of these are apparently considered a priority for no right turn on red or no turn on red. i should say the only thing that seems to be coming into the picture is largely commercial use, which is certainly a factor, but it doesn't talk about people who need to simply get to and from their apartment or home every day walking on the street. the other personal note is i've never turn on red system. i grew up in virginia. f those who grew up in new york city where it was never allowed. but in virginia, the no turn on red rule is very simple. you pull up to the painted stop line at the intersection, and if you cannot see from that position left, you may not turn right on red period. you're not allowed to encroach thein my opinion, the california statute

allowing people to encroach the crosswalk is essentially an error, and it's something that we can't allow in san francisco given our population density. and given the fact that we're theon sec, so for all those reasons, i call on you to sort of look at this issue holistically and support a citywide ban on no turn on red. thank you. thank you. are there any other speakers who would like to address this at the board on this item? remote? okay. we can close public commentand i will ask my colleagues for your questions or comments. mr. henderson, thank you. tnk you for the presentation. i have a question about the really about other examples cities that you mentioned, where there's no turn on red. i heard you say dc, and when i think about dc, i i think about how there's cameras for, you know, capturing some of everything. i guess, and so i'm

wondering if in the other cities where there may, they may be considering no turn on red citywide or it already exists are there also like, do they come with surveillance so that there's a ticket or something some kind of fine or, some, some sort of penalty that comes along with that so that you see the numbers, you know, of drivers turning right on. i'm sorry. yeah. turning right on red. you see fewer numbers of drivers doing of a financial penalty. do you know if there are if that exists in the other cities that are that may be considering this or have done it already, so like i said, new york city is the one that has this regulation for the longest time, they they have red light running enforcement, but i don't believe that they have enforcement specific to turning right on red, the other cities that are considering this are seattle. boston and washington

dc washington, dc, as you know, is a city that has a lot of automated enforcement, i'm not familiar whether they're planning to use the no turn on red. i think they could, in california, we're restricted in the sense that we would we light running violation. but, you know, using cameras and surveillance is a somewhat involved and complicated process in the sense of you have to install the to have the processes, as we know from the implementation of automated speed enforcement, those regulatory burdens can be quite high. i think the goal here is to not necessarily rely on, oh we'll pass this law and we'll have either police officers or cameras enforce them. we want to make1o sure that we have a situation where the regulations, for the most part, have the, the compliance, that that motorists bring when they stop at stop signs and stop at red lights like that that level of, of compliance is what we have to expect at we're not going

to be able to enforce our way, and so a citywide no turn on red sign, the question would be, what's the compliance going to be? what happens when people don't comply with the signage there is a potential concern about people expecting people tou> comply with a, with a, with a regulation. and then when they don't, that that also creates a certain amount of lack of consistency. so what we what we're trying to do is make sure that we're not adding regulations that perhaps will be more violated than others. so we're focusing in areas that have pedestrian activity. the hope is that people will see that there's people walking and take that step of not not starting the turnred. okay okay. and then, chair, i have a question about the last vision zero committee meeting. was there any particular leaning of that? the members of that committee towards an entire citywide or starting, you know, phasing it from one area and

start, sortning the scope of the no turn on red policy, like, or how did that discussion go? it did. i don't think the discussion landed in a, in a particular pbut i think there were some important questions around, for example, just l to ricardo's points about sort of howorcing policy. is it more is a city wide policy likely to be more self-enforcing because simply like i know i also grew up in new york. other people grew up new york. when you're in new york, you can't turn right on red. you just know that. or is that more likely to be self-enforcing and intuitive and easy to understand, or to have it in some places not other places? and could that confuse? can we? can we expect motorists to always be paying attention to that sign and behave differently in different intersections? or is it more intuitive and clear? because i think we always want our policies to be clear and easy to understand, to have it be just citywide. so therenut that

was an issue that was raised. and this question of sort of what is the greater risk? because i think you're talking about risks. what is the greater risk? have a city wide policy that in some cases may be in the middle of the night in a very, very low traffic area. someone doesn't obey tha policy. is that the greater risk or is the greater risk to continue to allow turns on red, which we've documented have caused crashes. so sort of just weighing factors we didn't reach any resolution, which is really why we wanted to bring this to this full board for discussion and voting because this does feel like a very important issue as pertains to pedestrian safety. but also pedestrian comfort. and theqi idea of our streets being welcoming and inclusive to all ages and abilitie that this just feels like really important policy matter for us to kick the tires on which is why i want to put no pressure on us to actay. and feel free to ask staff for additional analysis and options and considerations, and we° act at a future date. thank you for that. question is just around

potential legislation at the state level. you know, i heard in the public comment there was a mention about california state law, and i'm curious aboutrt of simultaneous path forward at the state level to i know that when with the actually speaking of cameras, with the, with intersecti there was a lot of work that went intote level before that was approved. and so i'm curious about whether or not if there is a need for something to happen at the state level, is there that while we go through the, sort of, sort of local vetting process to figure out what we want to do or can we solve this problem enough without having to involve, sacramento. yeah, i

would i about sacramento. first, san francisco, under current state law, could adopt a citywide ban by just basically installing a sign at every intersection so that authority exists that the ability for cities to impl there. so we don't need the state necessarily to act and to give us more authority to do that, there's been discussions whether, you know, if the state adopted a no turn on red ban for the reasons that we're talking about here, it would be beneficial in the sense that that would become education. it would become part of more the messaging. that's not just for people living in san francisco or coming tomore of this. the state. i don't see that happening at this point. we haven't had any legislator proposed going in that direction so at this point we're not waiting for that. we're we feel that we have sufficient authent justification to do the area wide expansion that we're doing. and basically, just to clarify an issue, because a lot of a lot pine and bush we are going to be doing

the pine and bushorth into the that area that we talked about. the northeast quadrant, sohose locations, i don't want people to misunderstand any sort of map or or discussion about saying like we're not doing it, we will probably end up doing about two thirds of the citypoint, just using the policy that's before you right now, so it is a pretty expansive expansion. but the question then becomes about locations that are, more light in traffic more light in pedestrian usage, where you maybe have a pedestrian crossing you know, once every ten minutes, tse kind of situations. do we want to ban the no turn on red those are the kind of decisions that at this point we feel why don't we have a discussion about the locations that do need the no turn on red? let's devote the resources there. we don't need the state, we need the state funding. we don't need the state authority. in terms of your second issue about the enforcement, nobody's proposing at this point cameras to allow the enforcement of no turn on red. so what? we're basically allowed at this point is to do,

red light running cameras. so if somebody, you know, approaches a traffic signal and doesn't come to a complete stop and just kind of rolls through the interson speed, that can be cited, but red light cameras are very expensiveoperate and to install. and so that's not really like a fea issue which is going to be basically, like i said, covering the majority of the traffic signals in san francisco at this point. okay, i said that was my last question but i have one more, just a processn. you said that you're planning to expand to include bush and pine and some of the other, areas. so if you do, in fact under this item, that's in front of us today, you can cover about two thirds of the city. do you need to come back to the board, torest? if we were to say, do a phased approach or, does this approval cover that entirely? i think at this, yes. at this point, we're proceeding the, the,

the policy of expanding it to areas of high pedestrian activity, which can be land use in certain areas like pine and bush can be high residential activity. it could be parks, it could be hospitals transit stops, major commercial districts. so it's a very wide definition. i think what we want to mainly communicate is we want this to be associated with pedestrian activity street. so any location that has a lot of activity we'll be doing, we would not need support from the board in sense of that, i think we welcome a future discussion. you know, if after a couple of years when we've done downtown area and we hopefully have gotten the state grant and are starting to do the expansion areas into the mission district, hayes valley into the nob hill russianisherman's wharf area that we can check in and see how this is going, what people's perceptions are, and then get that policy direction about like, hey, we've done two thirds of the city, why don't we do the remaining one third? what's the what are the problems? what are the feedback at that point? at that point

people will will know what we've done. and kind of react to that, but the good news is that we will do the areas first to have the most activity, the most will continue to do these for the coming years it's going to take multiple years to get grants and funding to keep doing this. so there's nothing at this point that's preventing this progress from proceeding. the i of, at this point, somewhat theoretical in the sense the point at which we have funding to do that. remaining third of outlying areas or, but at some point in the future we could get to that point where, you know, i come up to the board and say, hey, we're done with. remember we're done with that part of the policy. do we want to continue going do we not feel that that's necessary? i think that that's an open issue in the future. okay. thank you. thank you director henderson, director tarlow please. thank you. chair ekin, i i'm, i'm finding the discussion very interesting. and a lot of my colleagues have co points that

i kind of wanted to focus. i, i, so, as you know, i comel and, you know, it's not surprise to you but, you know, i have, limited signage you know, if someoneone is called on breaking a know, a norm or that they theyhave known, they say, well, where's the sign? and then if you have the nobody reads it. so it's, it's, you know you're a conundrum, every time with th and to me, that's a bit of an argument for a citywide, no turn on red policy, because there could be a number of other ways of communicating the rule to everyone. you know, if you're if it's a red light, you're not allowed to turn on it. hand, you know, if you're if you're sitting at a red light and there's just

nobody around and you're just like, it can , from people that are that just feel that there are too many regulations and, and they're all designed to just m more annoying. and, so, you know, and i don't say that to diminish thoseuw those feelings, they're, they're real and they come eal place. so it's a it's a hard one for me to feel that i could make a decision on today. but i just. i just wonder know, in terms of cost of signage and communicating the rule to people and the time here in in our hearings. i

a, if there was a citywide ban, it might less costly to communicate that because it's just more simple and it may not be necessary to have as much signage or as expensive signage around the city to communicate it. and, and then b if we did a partial coverage of the city if forward might be, you know, just overwhelmed with public comment of why why is there, why is there not no turn on red at my intersection in my neighborhood? and, and that, you know, conceivably could be a lot of our time and staff time fielding those requests. so those are the things that are on my mind. i don't want to characterize any of them as you

know, opinions that are leading me to any kind of decision. but but those are the things i wonder about. yeah. you' bringing a great point that we actually hadcally, which is the issue of what what if there was that new york city has, which said cities are allowed to do no turn on red bands within your jurisdiction or even a san francisco only rule. san banned no turn on reds, just like new york city has, giveníp the context of where we are historically and geographically you know, in california 100 years after the first vehicle code, i think, and i've recommended we n ys red is always communicated. we actually put two signs. don't think that having a citywide like the one that new york has, would work in san francisco at this point. new york always had it and never went away. we're doing somethingá new. i think if we had a sign less no turn on

red policy in san francisco we would we would g i know i'm a tourist? i live in california you know, those kind of issues would come to the forefront, we feel it's a good investment we're willing to to install. we have about 1300 signs, three 1300 signals in the city. we're willing to on two thirds of them for onput in the signs. because the benefits of that signa outweigh the cost. the cost of signage is, you know, a few thousand dollars, but the benefits are much more than that. of this generational issue educational issue, people may not respect science, but if you see those signs there again and again, day in and day out, the message will become, this is red, area. and we hope that that will sink in over time. thank you. thank you very much. thank yoector heminger. thank you, madam chair. maybe we could start for me

the statistic you gave us you gave us a few but oh me is 2.5% of citywide pedestrian injury. crashes were due to turning on red. doesn't that surprise you? i would think that number would be much higher, given that past studies had indicated that 1% of the overall total of injury crashes, are associated with with no time people will say, oh it's 20% of pedestrian injuries are due to no turn on red, that that to me. without doing the study. like one out ofat the police reports are not due to turn on red. turns minority of crashes. what's much more common is people not yie they're turning on a green light left and right, when they're trying to cross the street, those are the main factors oa5f ot not to turn on red.

well, and i guess the related question is what whatthe other 98%, and madam"g chair, in terms of this hearing being information, i'd like to request that. number one, let's see where all the crashes are and what is causing all the crashes involving pedestrians to try to situate and understand this. 2.5%. and if you've got some literature besides what you're showing us today, it'd be good to see it just to make sure that we're we're not at the low end of some scale, that we should be higher colleague's skepticism with signs, and what i would suggest is if indeed we are, and i think we would need to, as you suggest, we should put we need to put a sign at every we're doing this because i think it's cultural memory hard to overcome. my own suggestion would be if we're out there doing that, we ought to take down three signs put up. because our streets are so cluttered with

signals and signs and god knows d we're about to, make it even worse with our with our with our cameras for speed think and i know you worry about this that we've we've we've just got a forest of signs now, and peopl losing the trees for the forest. i also think we're sort of getting ourble in this discussion with the notion of phasing in a change for no red light. no. right on red versus adopting a policy that we're going to do itt there in phases, and it seems to me we've got a fisher cut bait there, and if in fact, you intend to get to, two thirds or 80% or 90% and stop, that's one

to a citywide, policy, that's 100%, but we're going to get the and i don't think we can have our cake and eat it too. i think it would be in terms clarity with the public, and in terms of getting a genuine reaction from the i think doing a citywide ban that we phase in over time, you weren't going to go out1 up all at once anyway, right? correct. i mean, it's not 1300. it's you multiply that by by four and then four approaches and then by two, two signs. so you get the math.y point is your presentation maybe is deliberately ambiguous on this question of whether we're going to get to you know, we're going to do this zone and then we're going to do the next zone, and then i could probably get to two thirds and you see where i'm going. yeah, i think it'd be better for the

publicnd for us as well that we just have a full on debate out going the whole nine yards. and if that's not goi then we're back in the trenches and look, i know i'm not asking a question here so much as pontificating, but i do think if we've learned a lesson from a lot of ourstreets and quick builds and all the rest is that when you get into the trenches, it's the war just takes forever, and you're constantly fighting the same battle over ander again. and i think we might be benefited by having a clear and citywide approach. and j is, you know which zone comes nextbu we're eventually going to get to 100%, and that would be my view at the moment, but i sure would like to see i people who are here, but i would expect if we're ing to get a decent sampling of public opinion on

this we need a lot more folks than to consider maybe doing some public opinion polling about it, which can give us some sense of aresentative sample of what people think, i would say this this is not some sort of attempt to kind of trick the into saying like, well we'll do the entire city and much, a technical approach of saying there are situations where we will be doing that, that turn on red restriction if there's a justification for it, like high pedestrian level of activity some safety issue bike lanes were mentioned. if there's a justification for i be told to go ahead and do the change. but i foresee there being situations where staff would look at a locatio be made safely. sightlines are good, pedestrian activity is very very light or minor. and those kind of situations our staff would not install the sign under the current policy because it's not required under the need argument. yeah. and i guess

what's more attractive to me, at least as you've described it, is the new york approach where the default is that you install it even though they don't have signs, but they've got aetter cultural memory than we do. the default is you're going too us and talk us out of it, as you say. and i completely expect you're right, that by the time we get to the end, you're getting it very low volume intersections and very low volumes of pedestrians, and look, that's problem to worry about another day, it seems to me. but telling folks it's 100% and we're going to get there in stages. and that's what you should react to in terms of an idea that we think might have some value even if the numbers at the beginning are fairly modest in terms of current fatalities and injuries. yeah. i issue here is kind of one of perspective. y this as, as saying

like we're going to do no turn on going to have some exceptions or we're going to do only the that are needed, and you may end up in the same spot. even new york city has exceptions, and they're mostly in staten island. so when you look at when you look at that kind of situation you're looking at areas that are a little bit more suburban, a little less active than than our downtown or manhattan. so in those kind of situations and european cities as well, will allow turns on red at certain certain circumstances. you could look at it as san francisco has decided to ban no turn on red but staff will allow it based on discretion at certain locations which would be about a third of the city. or you can look at it as like we staff had recommended expanding neutral reds to about two thirds of the city, and the remaining that that are not part of the current policy. so you may you may end up with a similar situation. all cities have the process by which they exempt locations. i think we're we're do we feel the no turn

on red would be okay, not being installed. it's almost like that's that's that's there discussing at this point. i suspect you're right about that. maybe not as right are. because two thirds is a long way from really is, and the number this policy in terms of injuries is not a huge number either, so i t, ave to be mindful of the fact that i think it would be to your advantage. i think it would be to our advantage. to adopt an approach where the default is that we move all the way and that we back off when we've got good reason to. and it's going to take us a while to getx to the default, in terms of carrying that out, in fact, maybe you coulgive u9s an estimate. how long would it take us to install 100%? at the pr we we've adopted, if we've been

doing right noww about a third of the city probably done. we would proba funding to do these kind of 100 to 200 locations at a time approach. it would probably take us a decade, now that that may sound like a long period of time, but changes that that i've seen through my tenure here that that are significant and require us to be committed to doing a change, so it's yeah, it's it effort to basically get to the point where we've done the entire city. well, the good news i've heard today from you is that we don't need to wait for the state to do that. correct we have authority today under current law to implement this policy citywide. i, i that's true from, from if you read the california vehicle code,at now okay. the concern that i havedp's staff driven change and there's political change. if you look at city cities that have done a citywide ban, it has mainly come out of city councils or it was

always adopted as part of their legislature or vehicle code. so if you look at new york city, it was it was basically a decision that was made at a legislative level, or or washington, dc was a city council level. it wasn't a decision that was made by traffic engineers. so when you delegate the authority to do no turn on red to people like mee are going to proceed with the standard approach of we need to if we get a complaint, we can rationally have a conversation with this person saying, the reason we're doing this is because of this. now, if staff is told by a policy making body or a city councior the state that now we have to ban something regardless of what people's technical opinion about that is, then we want to point to something saying like, the reasons because of board of supervisors resolution x or mta board resolution. why? it was a decision made by ay making body or an elected body or a legislator. and it wasn't anical decision made by some bureaucrat or some traffic

engineer. n on red has that element of it. that's kind of unique in the sen you can look at countries, you can look at cities that, and it works perfectly fine. and i think that's that's what, what what a lot of people wantbut the, the decision to do that, is some, as you noted, is one that should involve a larger conversation about, hey, this is we're agreeing to do this. we're we're not we're not going to have some sort of, staff decidea to do this. this is this is an important enough change in the in the sense that you're restricting people's ability to do something everywhere, regardless of technical merit, if you're going to do that, i think that's a decision that needs to be made by a higher body. it's not a decision that i can make. yeah. and look, we've got a pretty strong push from the board of supervisors in your packet today, so i you that one of the things we

would need to attend to in discussingg it out is what would be the exceptions policy, and how would you carry that out? because as you say if most of the cities around the world who do this have some kind of exceptions process, it probably makes sense that we have that too. but i returned to the notion that i think we're all better off if we're very clear about what the objective is and what the default is, which in my universe would be 100%. thank you, madam chair. thank you. director hemminger, di, just a point of clarification. as we're talking about exceptions, do we have the authority to ban turns on red on 19th avenue park? presidio sloat and skyline? other streets under caltransh, that's something that that we are thinking about as we consider the extension of westerly into venice avenue, we probably would need to get some sort of permission from the

state to do that regulation. so this is a joint jurisdiction, we have been able to do no turn on red on the side avenue without any problems, we don't feel that it would probably be much of a difficult discussion to have. we could we could get the state to approve it. but, yeah, we would we would need to have that discussion with them. tarloff did you wantél question? okay, great, great. with you. do you have any comments on this one? sure i'll make it brief. just i do, i do think that the pilot and pilot in the successful, and dragons point in, like, increasing comfortability and walkability and just overall pedestrian comfort for everybody, but but on the other side, i also want t doing a lot of great work in that area. in addition to red.

so there's that. and no turn on red is a tool in a suite of, pedestrian safety4w tools that that we need to. i think it's a decision for this board. is that a tool that warrants being applied at, all signalized intersections or just the ones that the that that are meeting the criteria or prioritization factors that are before us today, and i could see, the arguments for bot ban, but also appreciating ricar want some rationale for what each of the intersections are not necessarily each of the intersections, but each of the walks of the city that you are going to do this in. but i also

come back to the question of if it's a citywide ban, is it going is it going to increase compliance? i could see it going the other way. but i'm also always curious is it going to increase compliance in areas in areas where we already have no turn on red? that that and we know compliance is already so high and it's been it's been working out. it's been working out well to date but i it doesn't lookur, from my perspective either, that we're going to be able to make a decision today. i again i, i see arguments on both both sides here. whether it's a tool that we want to deploy around the cityin to just increase compatibility or do doing do we

want to have a specific rationale for all of the researcher? you can i don't know if you what. and i know director hemminger already has requested some additional information before making a decision. i don't know if you have thoughts on a conversations you would have before we vote or or conversationonal committees might might want to have. i know we have a vision zero subcommittee meeting scheduled for later in the month, even though that committee is already heard. this item, although, we've gathered the input of our colleagues here, so we might be able to bring that color to another discussion of this topic. again again. but i think we would need again to request

to be specific to staff in terms of what information we were requesting in order to make a decision on this. at some point when we come back from our summer break in the fall. yeah. thank you, thank you, thank you. director hines, director hemminger, did you want to respond? no, i not responding. and i don't want to double dip here, but i did remember a request that i'd like to additional information. and that's the effect on muni operations. and whether it's citywide or two thirds, that could be a pretty significant impact, and it'd be good to know what it is, yeah. there were the discussion about the downtown expansion. one of them was about the impacts on muni travel times and the other one was on emergency response. and we've been working with the fire department on the latter when we looked at the tenderloin data for routes that were in the

tenderloin and, and where we did the no turn on red, we did not find a significant i delay, now, granted, that's a limited we had to go on. the ability at this point to extend into downtown area gives us an additional data point that we we would we would be monitoring to see as, as we install these are there locations where it causes a significant delay to a route? and can that be mitigated, but but we the idea i thought of as well, i meanñi, we've got those signs around town that say no left turns except for muni. so you could could you exempt them somehow from t let them turn where cars can't? it's possible. i think it's going to be a pretty rare circumstance where a bus is actually making a right turn on a from a transit lane. and, you would be, do we want to exempt ourselves from that regulation, that that's something that we can take a look at. okay. thank you madam chair. thank you so much. okay.

so i just want to maybe ask a we all really understand what we're doing today, because i actually i admit that i find this map a little bit confusing, and i just, i do believe in, to the extent we can, adopting really clear, elegant, intuitive policies. so just take an example of an intersection that you don't clas pedestrian land use and understand what will happen with that. so the 11i knoery well is right at the end of the panhandle, as that's coming into golden gate park, and i know you bike through there yourself quite a bit. so and keys are so right. people crossing. stanyan at the panhandle. so you don't classify that as a pedestrian land use area. the intersection right there of, like, let's say that would not get a no turn on red treatment? yeah. the in this proposal. no no no. the map that was, that was included in the planning level, trying to create just a summary of the land uses thatr3 typically generate the most

pedestrian activity commercial. now you're different type of area which is a park that that that area has a lot of people crossing the panhandle is a natural, area for bicycles and people walking. in fact, that location already has a no turn on red for stanyan. so that would be a location where we would do a no turn on red. so maybe you can just help me in the public understand when you say high levels of pedestrian activity, what is that threshold mean? and how are people to understand what what which intersections would and would not receive the no turn on red treatment in this scenario, the it's not the if it's n. if that's not the indicator, then hoe we meant to understand. yeah, i mean the issue is, is there a high likelihood that pedestrian crossing when the vehicle is making the right turn on, onbv red? so at a

location like the panhandle yes, there are lots of people walking to the park. they're biking through the panhandle. the likelihood of a conflict is high and therefore the no turn on red would be justi industrial location where perhaps there's only one pedestrian every five minutes crossing on a crosswalk and there's long, long cycle length, long, long red lights, that would be ahe no turn on red would not be installed because the likelihood of there being a conflict between a turning vehicle and a pedestrian is more remote. so it's hard. it's hard to look at a city wide level without actually, you know, doing pedestrian counts or having some sort of proxy for pedestrian activity to actually determine, okay, this one. yes. i'm what we're guaranteeing the board is that we will be tak saying is this location one where there appears to be sufficient activity to justify an ultra non red? if the answer is we will install the no turn on red, but at a is, you know, you go out there and

you don't see anybody walking for ten minutes, then the, the likelihood of there being a no turn on red be, would be less. but again, just for just for clear understanding, the resolution in front of us says that we would support it with high levels of pedestrian activity. so just for this whole board to understand what that really means in practice what does that mean? that means that that's a general guidance. and you're going to interpret it. it's will or guidance in the sense that there's no specific number that we're attaching to this. we are taking a very broad approach in the sense that, like i said the entire nort is included. the mission district will be included, these are these are locations that have, you know, transit routes of residential uses, you know, lots of people walking around, but there are parts of san francisco where that's not true. and those are the locations where we can't without without looking at the location, we can't authoritatively say no.

but that those are the exceptions to doing. i guess maybe, maybe, maybe i made a marketing problem in the sense that i should have said that we were doing a citywide ban, but we would have some exceptions to the rule insteadf approaching it the way i have, i, i want to be transparent in the fact that i don't want to have regulations where th because we have a compliance problem with regulations now where they are needed and so my fear at this point is that if we're going to increase the amount of regulations and in which we're already getting a lot of complaints about the restrictions that we do have, not being followed, are we confident that if we install no turn on red at every intersection that that's the right decision based on the fact that we're hearing from people already that the rules that we do have are not being py enforced and followed. okay. i meancc, i heard at least one member of the public infer your map in slide 15o highlight areas

would be the areas receiving this treatment. and said high pedestrian activity and on high injuryn4 netwk, i think i think there's just a little bit of here with the implementation that this is leading me to think, like, again, we're probably not going to take an action today and probably need a little more conversation. i mean the issue is, is are we willing to trust staff to make a judgment about the necessity of a regulation, or are we willing to jadus3zt political decision about staff, staff, staff discretion is not is not to be taken on this matter. so like i said before, if you're in france and you're a traffic, you don't you're not you're not having to decide where to put neutn on reds like the government decided a long time ago in their vehicle code that that's not a regulation that needs to be done. so we are moving in a direction. and again, we're in in north america at this point that that that is moving towards this direction. there are other cities like new york city that have already always had this, but we're moving pretty

aggressively, in my opinion, and pretty proactively so that is what where we are right now. i think we're talking about a situation about trying to figure out which locations are do or do. i'm trying to put the empha which is, again, the majority of the city, the majority of the northeast quadrant. we will be doing major commercial park transit, stops pine and bush. we we're committed to do the location, but there are locations in san fran put this regulation on, we're going to have people who could hahey're going to sit there and they're either going to be resentful or they're going to disobey the rule. and we will have to explain why the city has decided to do that, and that that is something that that is worth debating. but i think it communicated to the public because as you see as you see from here, the public itself is not at this meeting, trying to, you know, weigh in on the side

of, of keeping the no turn on red where it's not necessary, so it's something that that was debated last year in th there was a lot of there were a lot of media stories. so i think the consciousness of this issue has increased, which is good. but the understanding of the communication that we've had that given this strong interest, that's given us the ability and the energy to do mostf the downtown area, and proceed forward in the future to do the majority of the, the signals in the city. thank you. yeah i see, director tumlin, you have your hand and i just wondered another theme speak about is because you remind us all the time about how overworked staff are, what a chronic limitation we have in terms of filling staff time, and encourage us to take the most efficient route. and so i just wonder in your remarks if you might think about, because this sounds like a lotwork to analyze intersection by intersection, is it warranted?

is it not warranted? i wonder if you could just opine on the questions of efficiency as regards this policy. yeah. thank you, so one take home message that i'm receiving both from staff and from all of you, is that we are all in agreement that we want to use the mbta's limited resources to most rapidly advance our shared safety goals, like we are all in agreement about that, so there are a couple of questions here that i think we still are speculating on. one is how effective is usingapidly advance no turn on red relative to other things that we would do. so it's this will take up time from our vision zero quick build efforts. the same shops that are doing the work and that is one of our key bottlenecks. the other question, which is a more intriguing question to me, is do we run the risk of rapid expansion of no turn on red? actually undermining our goals olio

intentionally started this part of the city we had where we have the most high injury network, the most pedestrians, pedestrians 24 over seven in the tenderloin and it seems to have some positive effectiveness as we expand out to places where there are fewer and fewer and fewer pedestrians. so long as the compliance with no turn on red is dependent upon the consent of motorists, motorists feeling like this is a reasonable thing that advances safety. so long as we have that consent, i think it will benefit safety. but if we lose that consent in the absence of real enforcement, it runs the risk of undermining the efficacy of our existing program. that's the that's the challenge that we are facing along with the staffing support the staff

recommendation of working incrementally and doing the analysis in order to determine whether the more we expand does this become more effective or less effective over time? and what else is necessary? like for example, automated enforcement, legalization from the state, what is necessary in order to augment the effectiveness of the is why the staff recommendation for incremental expansion, measurement, testing and reporting back makes sense to me because i don't want to establish a city wide program that then also sets up contradictory expectations, both for us moving more quickly in a way that doesn't make any sense because we've determined that this is not a very effective program. or having, you know, residents from the west side of the city be in anrgument about how quickly should we expand or

not expand. so this, this data oriented incremental approach feels right to me, particularly given our resource constraints. helpful. okay. well, if i could just sort of reflect what i've of a little bit of a bias towards a more policy, a little bit of a sense of maybe not being ready to act today, and a little bit more desire for kind of more conversation and more analysis. so i think we're not going to act today, continue the item. and then i note that we have the august 27th vision zero subcommittee meeting coming up. i wonder if that presents an opportunity for directors. heminger and i to get a little bit more into the details and have a little bit further conversation with staff on this item. and so that we would then feel more comfortable what we bring back in september to the full board. i propose that as a pathway forward, colleagues, but to take any, any refinements or amendments to that from any of you sounds good. great okay. yeah director henry, do you want to offer a i was going to say

i'm. i have no problem with that. i think, staff, i think we as to what other information a couple of us want. and it'd be great to get that in advance of the virginia subcommittee meeting so we can hav our discussions be informed by that. so, and we can be ready to bring something back in, in in the fall. does that seem workable? yeah yes. i mean, it. this is this is a major decision, and we want it to be deliberate. and like like we said before i think nothing here prevents us from continuing to make progress on on the areas that we were talking about. i think we are talking about basically what what is the ultimate stopping point or the future point of the policy. and this is this is a good point in which to discuss that. okay, okay. thank you everyone for your thoughtful input. and thank you to the staff as well. so we can go ahead and call the next item

directors that places you on item number 14, discussion and vote pursuant to admin code section 67. 10d as to whether to invoke the attorney client privilege and conduct a closed session conference with legal counsel. okay, we'll open public comment for item 14. seeing none, we'll close public comment. may i have a motion and a second to go into closed session, please move to go into closed session. thank you. please call the roll on the motion to go into closed session. director heminger heminger. i director henderson a henderson i director henry i henry i director tarlov i tarlov i can i

sfgovtv. there we go. i see. okay. the philosophers club probably. all right, directors, we are ready to come back. 517. sure. places you on 15, the board met in closed session to discuss item three. they continued item three a to a future meeting and voted to approve item three b. places you on item 16. motion to disclose or not disclose the information discussed in closed session. motion not to disclose. second. on that. on motion to not disclose. director heminger heminger i director henderson a, henderson i. director kinsey i. kinsey. director. tarlov. tarlov i&ñ chair eakin i keegan i thank

you the motion passes and concludes the business before you today. okay. thank you everyone. i would like to adjourn as a great supporter and fundraising champion for san francisco's cable cars during the feinstein administration. he passed away in july, just before his 88th 5,bi. with that, we are adjourned. thank you. thank you.

you are watching san francisco rising with chris manor. day's special guest is sarah

phillips. >> hi, i'm chris manors and you are watching san francisco rising the show about restarting rebuilding and eare imagineing the city. the guest today is sarah phillips the executive director of economic workforce development. welcome to the show. >> thank you for having me. let's talk about the city economic plan and specifically the city's road map to san francisco future. can you give a br and update on progress? >> absolute e. in february 2023 mayor breed roadmap comprised to 9 strategies to move the city forward understanding there was structural d lang lasting changing by the covid impa.shorter term impacts how people using transit downtown and coming out and are using small businesses, some of them remember long-term structural impacts.work.

how often we are in an office and how much offic companies who had headquartered in san francisco need. some of those re structural impacts how we stop. there has been a long-term change as online shopping takes up a greater share how performs and covid-19 took a shift that would probably take u 10 to 15 years happen and collapse what happened ofern the ó÷timeframe to 2 years so saw structural impacts how people shop. we have seen a lot of progress rchlt we are 9 months in and significant things we have seen is efforts creating permitinant services and homes for people experiencing homelessness is dramatic. we increased the number of shelter beds dramatically and take-up of the beds dramatically, and there is more work to do. on thng things that happened. we increased our police pay

among the highest in the bay area which is a important thing for recruitment. police recruitment across the country is so recruiting the best we can means we need to give a high pay set. august the highsh return in graduates. we see 75 decrease in retail theft in car break ins which is quality of life crime san francisco experienced so there is real seeing on clean and safe sides. one thing important in the mayor roadmap we are not trying to get back to 2020 vision. having a downwith people sitting at offices isn't st downtown it can be. i think it is a opportunity to bring 24 hour life use downtown. >> music and a great way to bring people to a

specific location. golden gate park we had lots of events in plazas throughout the city. can you talk about those and if there is upcoming events wptoo? >> i think you touched on something key to the mayor road map. for san francisco and particularly san wntown to move forward and be successful as a greaamerican city, it is about bringing people together because because they center to be together and music is a strong part that. the planet concert sear ries coming up and happening throughout the city not just golden gate park but downtown locations are a great example. there are smaller examples as well. the landing at--is a new plaza we constructed in the mayor roadmap where two streets come toa couple restaurants closed to cars in daytime, chairs and seating and throughout the week they have time and evening music to bring people together after

work. they participate in that. somethinwe are working on setting up for next year which is really excitinsf live program and that will bring a full series where we match local venues bringing their work and partnership to useian square, music center plaza and embark cadero. we will be able to announce concert series through the sf- >> you mentioned vacant to vibrant, that pr of attention lately. can you talk generally whatthat program is? >> yeah. so, we opened a we put out a call for landlords willing to offer groundfloor space for free for 3 to 6 mosmall business or sta proposal what they would do for 3 to 6 kz it is pilot.

we had a incredible amount of interest. we had--i'm forgetting the then we expected because we are in a place where commercial real estate understands they need to come to the table to make our groundfloor lively and resulting in a transition where the groundfloor is seen less as a money making operation, but more as a leader to lease upper floors.active ground floor yields better on the other 80 percent of the building you are trying to lease. that was great, a lot of cooperation scr over 700 small business or operators responded to that call. it is pop up. there is no intention this would result in forever small businesses, but there is certainly a hope and i think what we are hearing, i don't have but there are 17 activators in 9 different spaces, some are colocated, which is why the difference, and out of those 9 spaces that are being leased for free, now 7 of them are in

discussions for long-term leases so the spaces continue. it is the program. we are hopeful to have a second and third traunch and hoping to pilot in other ne with other partners. it is e is a lot of capital that goes into popping up for short amount of time but what we are seen is they vinesses are successful and san francisco want to support this activation so hopeto expand it. >> that's great. can you talk a bit about why piloting programs and testing things is so impo >> absolutely. you know, i would say not only tbally but important in san francisco specifically. in the reasons they are really important here is, it allows something and say, there may be consequence but let's understand those in real time rather then waitinstart a strategy while we think about them on paper and if they art we can modify the program as we go.

mta has absorbed the strategy whether a bike lane other to figure how best to use the street? is this working? is it working for bikes and cars and buses? maybe not, let's switch it around and pilots have been important to oewd to our particularly because we tend to have the ability and the through the budget process to pilot things for proposals or rfp process where we can put out a small amount of funding, try activation and small public plaza, see if it works and i think the benefit there is, if it doesn't work we tried it and had the benefit of seeing real time and when it does work, we are able to uplift that and move into a permanent strategy where our we piloted to another agency because it is part of the city operating

procedure. pilots also give people hope. when we have the short-term whether it is physical public plaza or activation that shows change is possible and allows them to vote for what they >> lastly, in lith light of the current ai boom, do you think there is a way to take a bunch of san francisco's status as a tech hub? >> i do, i think they work together. san francisco right now a strong vacancy problem in our office space. and there is a back-story to that. our zoning downtown has not prevented other uses, in terms of permitting uses of the multi-story building has been open including allowing residential but we put other barriers, cost and code barriers et cetera and what happened also during the height of our preevious boom is that,

the amount that tech companies were willing pay for office space bid everything out so -without intentionally zoning a single use downtown, we de facto became a single use downtown and thereat is the opportunity you are pointing out. now because downtown was so converwork from home, particularly as tech based downtown was and how much companies put at the market in the ofspaces we are seeing high vacancy now, all is lot of square feet but that presents a lot of opportunity. we have the ability to absorb expansion of the tech industry we are so strong at. we have seen over of ai space leased just in 2023 alone and there is still more demand out in the market, more companies looking for space so that is a growth spot absorbing some ofvac ancy. the opportunis prices for downtown lease s have also

dropped and that opeof opportunity to a breath of companies that were priced out in 2018, 2019, 2020. san francisco has always been great at starting companies and allowing them to grow here. when our prices are too high it prevents that growth so now we are a super fertile ground for more start ups and invasithe sector because they can come and enter our market and we have the space to offer. to talk about san francisco's assets and the leveraging at the epicenter of really great university and educational institutions. we are between uc berkeley and stanford. the graduates produced just from those institutions alone stay in the bay area and want to rise up and work here, provide a real opportunity for the start build their companies and companies to grow here so we confident we will absorb a certain amount of office space with ai tech. with that, we are interested in ft human capital growing graduates.

downtown university is something the mayor is open to pursuing and we are in conversations with uc berkeley we love to have as a partner in and then residential conversions are a great partner to that. as we build back the office space, people will want to live downto number buildings that can be converted to residenticosts are high. mayor breed and her partners on the board made significant changes to reduce the costs. we waived fees for change of uses in the downtown area. there are code changes that will make the conversions easier. there is a ballot measure e march ballot that will attempt to reduce costs for those as well. it is ongoing process and none of those changes we talked about absent ai growth downtown, but institutional growth downtown, arts growth downtown and residential conversions downtown are long-term changes so one thing collect i do think there is a opportunity per your question, but we also need to be patient because whatis a

real shift to the make-up of the downtown since from the growth it has been starting at sin that isn't a 2 year change, that is a 10 year change and we center to watch as it goes. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate you spending the time here today and your creative vision and positivity, so thank you so much. >> thanks so much for having me and hope you all downtown and shop. >> that is it for this for sfgovtv i'm chris manors, thanks h)

and welcome to the mayor's disability council this friday, june 21, 2024. this is in person and virtual public meeting. this meeting is to the public