news. >> good afternoon everyone. i now call the january 21st 2025 regular meeting of your municipal transportation agency board of directors and parking authority commission to order secretary silva please call the roll on the roll director chen presents chen presenting actor hemminger hemminger president director henderson henderson president director kinsey present kinzie president director tarlov carlo president vice chair kena president so

present for the record i know that director kinzie is attending this meeting remotely. director kinsey is reminded that she must appear on camera throughout the meeting and in order to speaker vote on any items places you on item number three the ringing and use of cell phones and similar sound producing electronic devices are prohibited at this meeting the chair may order the removal from the meeting room. any person responsible for the ringing or use of a cell phone or other similar sound producing electronic device places you in item number for approval of minutes for the december 17th regular meeting directors. >> are there any changes to the minutes? >> no. all right. well now open public comment on item number four and this is the approval of the minutes. any public comment on this item? secretary silver? any accommodations? all right. with that will now close public comment on item number four. >> colleagues, is there a motion in a second to approve the minutes some of the moved thank you. >> thank you.

thank you director to slow piano secretary please call the roll please and the motion to approve the minutes director chen hi jenny. director hemminger i hemminger i director henderson henderson i director lindsey i nci director tarlov i tarlov i director catena i i think you the minutes are approved places you all right on number item number five communications i have none. directors are there any communications? >> see none. all right, secretary silva, please call the next item please. >> places you on item number six the directors report. >> good afternoon everyone. i am excited to start this director's report by honoring two of our teams the temporary sign shop and the team that put together the muni store. i'd like to ask our director of

streets victoria wise to come up with our first recognition. >> good afternoon vice chair hina members of the board victoria wise streets director and i'm so so very pleased and honored to be here to recognize our temporary sign program a small but very very mighty team of 15 people and administrative staff whose commitment is really unparalleled and ensures the creation of temporary signs across san francisco. >> so a temporary no parking signs clear the curb for special things like movies, valet parking, street closures, fairs, festivals, spirits, protests, civic events you name it they do it all. and these signs are of course absolutely essential to help prevent double parking to keep our city moving and to make sure that we don't have disruptions and that loading and unloading happens in a way that works for the system. so thousands of temporary no parking signs are posted each month. >> thousands ranging from

really small events and just a couple of signs on block parties and things like that to really large events like the upcoming lunar new year parade for example, where we're putting up 1500 signs at more than 40 different locations to address everything from security, from staging muni reroutes and so much more. the team works with it's a very ,very collaborative team and it works with our planners, our engineers they work very closely with the san francisco police department and other partners to coordinate the location, the schedules, the requirements of everything. they actually work very closely with marta who is the queen of all special events in the city and she was going to come and say a few words of gratitude to this team today. but she is sick but she very much sends her regards and appreciation for how closely they coordinate with our team. >> not only that not only special events but our temporary sign program also supports our own internal mta operations when we have engineering projects for a street our transit projects,

our muni reroutes, things like that. >> they work very closely again with the police department to support all kinds of security events that they have but also police department community events, funerals, neighborhood activities, training, dui checkpoints, toy drives, marches you name it. like i could just let's stop 100 different things that they help with the 2024 election year has been difficult and had many different security issues and so related to that we had lots of different requests to the temporary sign program in particular and i would say many last very, very last minute requests like within 24 hours for some of the dignitaries that came to san francisco which we're very happy to host but our team jumped into action and made sure that we were able to accommodate these special folks coming to our town. >> and then i would like to say that last year you all are familiar with this but the mayor and the board of supervisors passed a community that waiver program where we're trying to encourage more events on our streets bring in more

joy to our streets. but that means more people are throwing events and that means more work for a temporary sign program with the existing staff that they have and they've stepped up to this challenge and are doing everything they can to make those events successful. >> so again this is a pretty small but really mighty team and they have a lot going on. some things that i'll reflect on personally is that they're always willing to help when you reach out the answer is like yes, we'll figure out how to get it done and that is the kind of attitude and that is the kind of culture that's exemplary and that we wanted to continue to build for our organization. >> they are incredibly responsive and willing like i mentioned willing to do stuff their jobs are not glamorous and people don't talk about what they do a lot. >> we talk a lot about we put in a muni improvement here or this kind of infrastructure here but they are the bread and butter of our division of this organization.

they really are and that is why i'm very honored to recognize them here today at the board. so with that i'd like to really acknowledge gretchen rood who is the manager of the temporary sign shop and has done an amazing job really turning this team around in the last several years with the partnership of darryl and ted who are also on the leadership team. >> so gretchen, do you want to come up and say a few words or darrell, one of you guys to last off? >> all right. coming up i first off want to just acknowledge gretchen it's been over a decade now that she's taken over the leadership of this program and she's cultivated such amazing team i can do attitude. i just want to say i'm very proud of the work that you've done for the agency. i want to acknowledge you also with my flowers. >> this is a big deal and you've done it well.

>> thank you so much. i just would love to recognize my wonderful team. only a few of us could be here today but there's 15 of us and everyone has their hands in all everything we need to do to make sure everyone gets the correct signs out there and the events can take place. and so i just really appreciate the team i work with and i am so glad to be a part of the mta. >> thank you. >> thank you. gretchen are we doing the awards? yeah, let's do it. all right. um. yeah, if you guys can give me a hand and folks, we're going to call your name and then you coming up. >> so jose castellanos, come on up. >> okay. houston forester manuel

hernandez, sean menino. and last but not least, gretchen rude coming up. thank you for your leadership. gretchen thank you. members of the board. >> and we do oh, all right. you want to do it here? yeah. >> thank you, team. i'd now like to invite dianna to set us up to honor our merchandizing team.

oh, awesome. >> well, that's a tough act to follow. >> well, good afternoon. board president kahana board members are director hirsch, ma'am. d.a.s ladies here if you don't know me already. i'm the interim director of external communications marketing and outreach. i've been doing this for a while with the agency for about 18 years in the same division. so i've seen most of the staff develop, grow, move up and expand in a variety of careers. what i'm so excited about that's the most rewarding part of my job. >> so today though i'm going to recognize a section. i'm going to recognize our talented and hard working team in the marketing and creative services and digital communications who launched two of muni's long awaited firsts. i'm sure you're all going to

love to hear about these things because we're all proudly displaying them right now. so if you look behind me you'll see no lack of representation from our division team. >> we are in communications after all and the staff is wearing some of the things the merchandise i'll be talking about and i really really most coveted muni holiday sweater that everybody's still asked me how to get this so so this is something exciting for us to talk about because we don't get to always do the fun stuff. and so today we're going to recognize quite a large team. >> our marketing manager jeanne brophy who's here today to receive this award on behalf and her team they launched both the munis first holiday sweater in june which had record sales and then muni's first online drum roll merchandise store to this day. >> yeah. wow. well yeah, it only took us 18 years and i can tell you we tried several times to do this and jeanne and her team were able to pull it off.

i'm going to recognize the names. i think i'll put that to the end so when we give out the awards. but i do want to recognize some of the really detailed work that went into this project because sometimes we don't realize what it goes on behind the scene all of a sudden magically a merchandizing store appears ain't that easy. >> so both of these efforts required they were a big lift. they required design and marketing strategies along with a tailored social media campaign and really stellar trademark design work which is probably one of the things if any of you can relate is what held us up for the longest time over the years. but somehow this team was able to imagine they get past that that that challenge and here we have today the success. >> so some of our teams jimmy leon and byron chap sorry jimmy leon and byron they provided the design concepts and artwork for the sweater and the design support which was very important for the merchandise store. david and jessie enabled our first e-commerce arrangements and ensured that the online

experience support that was supporting these existing projects until now we did not have that. >> sophia who's our magical social media person she planned and implemented detailed and engaging social media campaigns to really help us ignite the interest and enthusiasm and it really worked. we saw that in the numbers that drove towards our store just to purchase the sweater alone not even the merchandise. >> jeremy our agency photographer who we all know and love he made sure we put our best foot forward for every photo that he took and he did an amazing job at that. and enrique who has an incredible talent for videos he actually helped create the sales video for the holiday sweater. i think a lot of you saw that on our social with our lovely models both sophia and anton's showing off our sweaters on cable car rides and all types of different areas. >> it went over very well in our last and really one of our important areas. alan, our data analyst he helped us keep track and up to date on the latest sales

figures so we really wanted to track our success and see what kind of revenue the store would possibly bring in and a sweater would. and so we're able to look at that now and see what kind of revenue this is generating. >> by no means is it going to solve our problems that we're facing but you know, at some point it could actually generate enough revenue for us to have maybe a full time dedicated staff person funded to really take this to the next level that i think is very exciting. >> and so what jean did was she oversaw the procurement product design product merchandizing along with the marketing strategies for both projects coordinating with our colleagues which we know can sometimes be challenging for cities attorney's office i.e. the trademarks but we love the trademarks office revenue and accounting and i don't say that it was challenging for and i don't mean it in that way it's just challenging to get through all the hoops and things that you have to get through. i look over and i want to make sure that's acknowledged but she made sure all of this came to fruition leading her team

for the successful implementation of what you see today in june. >> just so how you understand the process, how it worked. the staff designed what they called the icons of san francisco holiday sweater and that hit the markets hit the market for presales in june there was no lack of of a desire for that the minute it hit we had orders coming in more than we could actually handle and then if in case christine could pull it up or if someone from the team maybe sophia wants to stand up the actual popular sweater this sweater features the this would you come over and model? >> yeah. lovely. sophia, our social media expert here we go. >> so that's the sweater actually features the san francisco sea lions fisherman's wolf crabs. the wild parrots are famous cable cars kate tower and the transamerica period pyramid and a delightful all wrap around design as you will see portrayed here and above and beyond that to the sweater

actually also the color scheme took an inspiration from the historic f line street car number 1055 philadelphia. so these colors cream dark green and red are pulled from that. so it actually is a symbol of that street car which we're very proud that we we use that as well. >> but we didn't stop there. >> no, no we couldn't stop there because we're in marketing communications. we don't stop. we then launched the first online merchandise store in the agency's history the muni store in november. this mini merchandise store has not only attracted interest locally but it has throughout the united states, canada, europe and asia. we have sales coming from people buying from all over the world. i think that's important to recognize that because that's not something that we actually thought up that would happen and i can tell you that we kept running out of merchandise we've had to re up and re up and we have not a bad thing though and then more than 30

items were available at the launch of the store that included hats, hoodies, t shirts and a lovely pillow i don't want to forget the pillow because people are loving that pillow so as of the end of october sorry at the end of december we've received more than 3000 orders with the average size is about the average size of the order was about $64 and 50 cents over 3000 orders. >> we haven't i and i'm sure that's moving even faster now over the holidays but we don't have the exact number but that's what the average is. >> so i think it's really important that we acknowledge a team who took these two big efforts above and beyond with all the other additional work that they that they handle and a lot of times people don't understand actually what our our marketing you know, communicate our marketing creative and i'm saying it the right way our marketing creative in digital team does i was trying to add myself in the mix i shouldn't try to do that right? but it's also important to know what they do. so here are some things i just

think it's important for all of you to understand. they help us in a number of ways. they basically support all of the divisions across the agency and there's quite a few divisions with a lot of different needs that they help us by designing project materials. a lot of those materials you see for the projects that are out there that's our creative design shop doing that supporting our brand through some of these ridership cramp campaigns to increase increased ridership. they also help with designing and auditing all the wayfinding signage and collateral. very big responsibility overseeing our public service announcement program which has been running for years and also running and maintaining our sfm ted.com site and so much more. >> so i think it's really important that we give them all a hand applause for acknowledgment first and then i want to have jeanne brophy come up and say a few words and at that point what i do want to make sure that we're at the end of this i want to just call out the names. there's quite a few folks so i

want to call them out and then jeanne will hand out the actual plaques. so today we recognize jeanne brophy who stands before you here sophia shirt yay! sophia asher enrique aguilar, leon yu, jimmy lee, byron johnson and tom belov, jeremy mckenzie, david copeland, alan wren and jesse laura for planning, coordination, creativity and persistence and making these projects a reality. >> jean thank you. >> thank you for this recognition. i'd like to acknowledge my incredible team who contributed to turning this effort into a reality through their creativity and persistence and also for tolerating me at times the effort was a big lift but it turned out beyond our expectations. >> i'm also grateful to our colleagues across the agency in legal finance and revenue and i did want to call them up by name because they were definitely an important part.

david innes, lillian levy and the chief legal office trinh nguyen, carlos peyser, eric john in our finance department and emmet nelson and fred student in our revenue department they were integral to getting this work off the ground. >> i'm also grateful to our set that finally i believe the spread of merchandizing program comes at a pivotal time. many san franciscans have reached out to me and said thank you know many of them say they don't want to wear our warriors or giants merch which i don't understand but they would wear an immuni logo item because they want to support san francisco. it's a visible symbol of support for both our muni riders and our entire city demonstrating san francisco's resilience and our shared commitment to lifting up our community as we build toward a brighter future. >> so thank you. and in the words of elle woods, the great philosopher from legally blond we did it right.

>> so shall we hand out the awards? jean oh sure. yeah, i'll do that all all right, you i'm ready. >> hold it up. >> david copeland, please come to jeremy menzies. >> if you could take a break from shooting anton belov mm hmm. >> byron johnson. alan wren. jesse weller and jimmy lee's

not here but we all know and love him dearly. >> leon you sophia share our lovely model and ricky aguilar and rekha is here. let's see. >> oh, one soldier down and jean brophy, marketing manager. all right, we're done. we're out of d.n.a..

yeah. i just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart as a san franciscan as well as a native san franciscan jean, you're absolutely right. this the swag is just it fills the spirit of san francisco. this reflects the spirit of san francisco, these two recognitions that we heard today are essentially celebrating what it means to be a san franciscan through transit and celebrating transit. and so i just really want to celebrate you all for this trip momentous achievement. this particular store was a dream of mine as well. i vocalizes multiple times. it's so, so beautiful to be able to compete with caltrain with the i'm trans holo additional sister agencies to to pull off such a beautiful holiday season celebrating our our beautiful transit system thank you so much for restoring our pride thank you thank you. continuing with my report on february 1st we will be making muni service changes citywide. they are relatively modest

and reflect what we shared with the board in november. these changes aim to support downtown economic recovery because of our ongoing financial crisis. they also include small reduction in service in places where there is less ridership demand at certain times of day and in places where we have parallels service. but we've designed the changes to minimize impacts to our customers with a focus on making muni service more efficient. details of the changes are at s.f. mta.com/service changes and they will be as i said rolling out in february. >> i'm fortunately i do anticipate we are going to need more service cuts this summer and we are beginning an outreach process to really get policy and community feedback on how to approach that work. we will be following up with you on february 4th with details about different scenarios and an update on how

we are continuing to work to manage our agency expenses. >> i also want to share that the central subway tunnel from chinatown rose park station to fourth and brannan will be closed from february 26th to march 14th. we will be doing work to stop the water that's been seeping into the tunnel and causing water damage while the tunnel is closed. we have prepared in in order to minimize the amount of time that the tunnel is closed. they're going to start some of the set up and staging in advance so that we are really using those construction days in an optimal way. so starting february 3rd crews will be doing some of the preparatory work. we will be using four parking spaces on washington street starting from february 17th to

february 26th. the crews will be doing more visible prep work in the station including doing some protection work to make sure the construction doesn't impact any of the glass or any of the artwork from february 26 to march 14th. the tunnel will be closed and we will be operating a te bus between chinatown ross park station and the fourth and king stop. and we will be rerouting the t line into the market street subway operating katy. similar to what we did prior to the subway opening we've designed the service construction plan to really minimize customer inconvenience and it'll be well staffed with ambassador support. so that customers can continue to travel in a seamless way. this work is really important to make sure that this valuable investment maintains that for

many years into the future. i also want to share that the next meeting of the muni funding working group will be held on january 23rd and there will be a follow up meeting on january 31st. the group will be discussing funding scenarios for the support of the city's transportation programs and services. this meeting will build on our discussions last year with the muni funding working group on possible efficiency measures and service and program cut scenarios. we are systematically walking through a menu of options that we have before bringing back some package proposals to the sfm to board the public and participate in these meetings. details about how to join the january 23rd 9:30 a.m. meeting are available at s.f. gov. s.f. dot gov slash muni dash funding. dash working dash group.

and i want to thank the controllers office for their continued facilitation and support in this effort. i'd like to now shift to fix it week. i'm really excited that we held our first fixit week of 2025 last week from january 13th to the 17th. our maintenance teams including track and signal and mechanical systems overhead lines and motive power crews conducted an intensive maintenance campaign to improve the reliability and performance of the muni metro system. i want to thank board members tarlov and henderson for taking time to go overnight into the subway and really understand some of the technical work and see this system in a way that you can't see during daytime hours. the longer hours allowed our crews to perform deeper and more thorough inspections as well as to tackle larger

projects that are difficult to complete during our standard and very, very short service shutdown window. key work included replacing worn rail and overhead kattner components. clearing debris and sand for trackway to prevent corrosion. inspecting and maintaining our drainage systems for improved reliability. and re lamping our trackway lighting for better visibility . >> our custodial crews also performed deep cleanings of our muni stations. as we continue to really focus on the customer experience crews also focused on critical signaling maintenance such as testing and cleaning switch systems and updating equipment to enhance system efficiency. all these programs enhance the customer experience. they reduce breakdowns and they help us keep the transit system faster, cleaner, safer and more reliable.

i also want to share that in september we published an accessible transportation needs assessment meant to evaluate how well we meet the diverse transportation needs of older adults and people with disabilities. developed through extensive community outreach and input for more than 40 years. the assessment provided critical insights into current accessibility challenges and will guide future improvements. along with the assessment we published a survey asking residents to help the agency identify and address transportation improvements for riders with disabilities and older adults over the next five years. the survey asked participants to rate their priorities for muni projects street safety and paratransit and taxi services. the survey was open for mid september 2024 to january 15th, 2025. during this time staff promoted the survey through advertisements including

digital advertisements, our shelters and our car cards on our vehicles. also through partnerships with community groups and advisory councils and by attending community events such as the oh my senior center health fair senior disability action senior safety school, our downtown fairs thursdays farmer's markets and by hosting workshops with monolingual chinese seniors we received over 1300 responses which were now analyzing residents tended to lean older with more than half of the respondents over the age of 55 and the largest subset comprised of people ages 65 to 74. among respondents that disclosed their disability the majority or about 40% had a mobility disability. english was the most spoken language but we also had 13% of respondents indicate that their primary language is cantonese

and 9% indicate their primary language was spanish. the highest response rate was among white respondents. we also had about 30% of respondents from asian pacific islanders. once we're done analyzing the responses we will provide a report on the findings and begin a robust public engagement process. develop goals and actions on the highest priority needs. >> the next thing i'd like to talk about is a side letter agreement pursuant to the city charter. we are disclosing the contents of a side letter to the service critical labor contracts of the transport workers union. t.w. you local 254 the 9163 transit operators regarding inconvenience pay copies of the side letter and costing analysis are posted online at ww w dot sfm ted.com slash side letters. if the directors have questions this matter is on the agenda

for our closed session today. and then i think my final item is to talk about the safer taylor ribbon cutting which is a really valuable safety project that we honored on january 3rd. we held a ribbon cutting for the safer taylor project which was a culminating a project that began in 2017 with community outreach and engagement. there were 94 collisions and three fatalities on the segment of taylor from market to center. higher than the average of the rest of san francisco. so making taylor safe was an absolute must. the work included removing travel lanes, installing a new left turn signal at taylor and ellis painting safety zones and daylighting intersections. we then focused on taylor between ellis and turk. this included widening sidewalks and corner sidewalk extensions, adding decorative

crosswalks and pavers including new trees and planters and seating areas and upgrading traffic signals and streetlights. this project has combined traffic safety improvements as part of our quick build program and has made the streetscape more beautiful and easier to navigate. the process to develop and implement this project was incredibly collaborative between the people who lived and worked in the area and the city. this is exactly how city government work should work and i'm excited to honor it here. thank you so much julie. colleagues, do we have any clarifying questions for the director on the directors report? item six. >> dr. chen thank you, chair aquino. thank you so much for that report and really appreciate commendations. i actually have a long list of things that people have asked

me about merchandise requests of things that they wanted so so there is seems to be a lot of of pent up demand i think for people to show their pride in muni. so i'm really excited to see that in the streets and hopefully we will forward some of that to the team. um so some very quick notes you know for summer service i hope. i know the i know that the team is hard at work on service planning. i really also hope that possibly some options in addition to cutting service is also some revenue. i know that there is a campaign that some of the transit advocacy groups are doing around trying to provide other options and so i hope that's something that the directors do see on the table for the summer . >> thank you for that. when we come february 4th we will bring a broader financial picture and particularly how we see summer service cuts

factoring in as a part of a larger financial strategy to make sure that we are continuing to live within the revenues that we're generating and continue to deliver safe and reliable services and programs. >> thank you. and then for the service changes for february 1st i think i heard that the there were some changes scheduled for the 30 short is that i heard that that might have the timing of that changed? >> is that correct or am i? yes. so when we presented to the board in november we had anticipated all of the changes rolling out february 1st when we implement a new schedule for operators to also have a chance to pick their work to align with their family needs and by seniority based on feedback from stakeholders in chinatown because there's a lot happening

in the next six weeks we have the lunar new year, we have the parade, we have the all-star game, we have the central subway construction happening. we have worked to push back the change to the 30 short until march 15th when the central subway water work concludes. >> thank you. i think partners in chinatown really, really do appreciate that and really hope that those reduce confusion. you know, i think we did see the plan so i'm hoping hoping that this does help with service but i'm also hoping we'll be watching to make sure that you know, i think especially that what i feel like the transit desire path for most people is is really that section of stockton between broadway and market. and so just making sure that you know that transfer at post or transfer sutter is working really well and i hope that we can monitor and make sure that that goes well and work with the community.

>> thank you for that feedback. all right. thank you. and then the funding working group i think there's a so i think you said january 23rd there was a meeting on the 29 that's canceled. >> is that right? it's been rescheduled due to the lunar new year and it will be happening on january 31st. >> 30 first. thank you. okay. 31st. >> um, let's see. >> great. that's all the questions. thank you. thank you. >> director chen, director cha love. thank you. chair kena director kirschbaum also about the schedule changes coming up in february i have heard from community members that there is i think this isn't going to be very surprising. >> there's a strong desire for more and better communication about changes and i, i can't really speak to what efforts have been made so far and i wonder if you could speak to

that a bit so that people can understand where to where to how to listen for for changes so that they can be up to date. >> it's you know so it's very important. >> yes. thank thank you for that question particularly for the the changes happening on february 1st. i do not think customers need to interact with the system any differently than they do today and i think that's a really important thing to emphasize and something that will be making sure we close the loop with from stakeholders particularly folks that have emailed the sfm to board. so for example the a route that used to come every ten minutes will now come every 12 minutes

for the average customer going out to wait for that bus. they're not going to change their their habits and we need to make sure that that's communicated successfully. i think sometimes when people hear that service is being cut on their route then they become very nervous that their route is being cut or that a segment of their route is being cut. and that's something that i am hearing and some of the comments that are coming through to the mta board and we need to work across our communication channels in order to communicate all of the details of the changes are available at sfm ted.com slash service changes and they have also been communicated to various community stakeholders through our board of supervisors and a lot of a lot of different means. but we will will go back and make sure that we have spread the word sufficiently

but also not over communicated in a way that people may be concerned that something is being changed more significantly than it is. these changes are very modest and i believe were designed in a way that they would not be noticed by the average user. is it fair to say that the changes that are coming in the summer may be a little more more noticeable to the public? yes, i think a phenomenon that occurs that i feel like i see is that when a change occurs, you know, an observation that may be somewhat normal of a bus that's quite crowded, the conclusion might be drawn that that is due to service cuts that may or may not have impacted that particular bus or

time. it's very easy for people to draw conclusions like that and you know, generally more information can help with that with that tendency, you know, just understanding exactly when but i hear your point and i and that's it. thank you very much chair thank you. director travel director anz thank you and thank you director kirschbaum and welcome to your new role by the way, two quick things one like director chen and vice chair kahana i have heard the favorable views of the merchandise stores and thank you for your teams and well

deserved. who knows i think it well i'll i'll step with our most optimistic expectations and two i just wanted to also acknowledge this effort project and ribbon cutting there has been i know that the folks in the temple were very appreciative and also i wanted to recognize her along with her for speaking out and then that she found out and was asked to do that within. thank you for speaking there and i know that the community member who got to cut the ribbon was very active in that experience of collaborating with the and so i do just want to call that project down for its collaboration with the people to know what the traffic taskforce and the other community based organizations that are around that area.

so thank you for that. thank you. director kinsey director henderson thank you. i just sort of maybe piggybacking off of director hines's comments, i think that the safer taylor ribbon cutting is great and i'm glad to see it and i would love to to see some sort of data or report back on the numbers because the the collisions that you mentioned are so disturbing and i think it would really be nice to just hear if how much the the difference is being made with the the improvements that were that were made to the street or to those different intersections. and so maybe in a few months or six months, eight months whatever and nothing you know, not some big presentation but it just would be nice to revisit it and see if you know

something impactful happened after installation of all of the new street improvements. thank you. >> thank you, dr. henderson um, well, i just want to say julie like it's been you know, these last few weeks i've just been very busy and i just so celebrate the fact that we've been able to do so much in such little time. i think one of the things that you know is giving folks a lot of pause right now is it's just there's just a lot of uncertainty in the air. right. and so when they hear words like service cuts so when they hear words like there's going to be changes like i think it just it gives folks like some apprehension or some pause of like what is it what is my day to day going to look like? how is this going to affect you know how i get to point a to point b to my doctor's appointment to my to my job, all those different things. right. and so i wonder if you know in moments where we do have what we know is service cuts because

you know, we're shaving off, you know, a little bit of time here, adding a little bit of time elsewhere if there's other ways to talk about it so it's more digestible to the public. so it's service delays or something like that so that it doesn't feel like oh my my my line is getting cut because i still think that even though the pandemic was some time ago, there's still a lot of, you know, trauma induced response when it comes to hearing the words my service is going to get cut right. and so just something about how we frame it and how we talk about it i think is really important to just recognize how folks are still digesting that type of information considering that we're still very much you know, in that pandemic era post-pandemic you're of a very much adjacent to it. so just some suggestions there in terms of like how to talk about it with folks and just wondering like for our edification to if you can just give us a sense of what service cuts in the summer. you know, it seems like that is a process.

you know it's not something that happens overnight. it's not something that even though the customer will experience it, it will be something that you know, we will communicate thoroughly. if you could just give us a sense of like what that would look like because that that does seem like it would be more of a cut versus a delay in service right. thank you for for the opportunity to kind of reflect in a little more detail on what we're looking at for this summer. so we are going to spend the next several months getting community and and policymaker feedback on how to approach that the the cuts we are looking to have final guidance like late march so that we can really start the schedule building process which takes almost four months. so in that time we will develop

our communication, our messaging. we will want to make sure depending on the the design of the service cuts that the people that are most impacted have a lot of notice and really understand their alternatives. even the the summer cuts which we anticipate are going to be on the order of about 4% of our service will still leave people with very robust alternative options and we will make sure that we have a lot of time while the schedule building is underway to really communicate and message that to the affected customers. so this kind of initial couple of months is really focused on feedback and then from there

once we have final direction we will build the schedules and communicate out the changes. thank you julie. >> director hemminger thank you madam chair. i may have a slightly different take on this. i think fundamentally we have to walk a fine line here between alarming people on the one hand and telling them you know nothing to see here. move along, move along. the fact is muni's in trouble and the fact is we're going to have a hard time climbing out of a $300 million annual hole and we're going to need the public's understanding and support to do it. >> so i do think it's important not to alarm people but they need to be better informed about the choices that we face

and those choices are not pleasant and there is no way to sugarcoat that. we rely on muni to such a great extent in this community that we just assume the bus is going to show up every morning like it always has and we're at a crisis point because we've basically exhausted all the federal assistance we had during the pandemic. that's true around the country and not just here but we are reliant on that revenue. we're reliant on general fund revenue which is also in short supply right now. so we're part of a bigger problem that the entire city and county of san francisco faces and we just have we have a lot of work to do and i think as you know director hensley and i are on this funding task force. so i'm sure she is looking forward as i am to seeing what you show us in the next couple

of weeks. but that's just the beginning. we've got a lot of work to do to find the revenue that we need and to balance the budget within the revenue we have so that maybe just rounds out the conversation a little bit more because i, i do and i know you share this concern. i do worry that folks don't really fully appreciate the danger we're in and it's not here yet. so there's always a risk of sounding like crying wolf but it's common and we need to get ready. >> thank you, madam chair. >> thank you director hemminger for grounding us in that and i do think it's it's a really important grounding for us to understand what situation we're in right now and why we're having this these discussions

right now of service cuts and what are the different alternatives and the fact that the muni funding working group is working so hard to develop choices for us that in many ways are not going to be pleasant but they're tough choices that we have to make to make sure that we still have some service to offer the city and county of san francisco. so thank you. director hemminger and with that i will now open item six which is the director's report for public comment. >> i do have one speaker card for alicia dupree. >> mr. perry thank you again chair alida dupree for the record she and her team foltz as i speak about this i want

learn more about this merchandise store. i hope we can have a an actual store when i go to new york there are actually three stores operated by the new york transit museum, one in the museum, one it to broadway and another probably their busiest store in grand central terminal, that famous railroad station which i think some of you have said you've actually gotten to see so hopefully i can hopefully we'll have some good progress with this and i'm especially intrigued with the sweaters and seems like i know bart has sweaters. i haven't gotten one of those yet. i want to get a sweater that says grand central on it so we'll see where that goes. accessibility is essential. >> i think we have one thing that we should hopefully do very easily and that is to make

all of our light rail stops accessible and we have 100% accessible already on the busses. we have to make sure all the ramps work but we should have 100% light rail stops in new york city they're working on making all the stations accessible so so we need to do that here too and i am concerned about service cuts. are we going to save that much money even if we were to shut down the system today there still be costs because there's fixed costs. >> i don't know if we're going to save a whole lot. >> i don't want us to lose the gains in ridership that we have gotten. we worked so hard to get there and we're getting toward 100%. i want more people on the busses, on the trains and the cable cars. >> we have to give them a service so they will use it. >> thank you. thank you so much for your column mr. pre next speaker please. few more speaker cards honest honest bodkin bob finn bob

bodkin hello. thank you director kirschbaum for your reporter and congratulations on your new role. >> also i'd like to thank director karloff for coming to my neighborhood association the hank haight ashbury neighborhood council. i love that community engagement and it sounds like it's going to be very, very important given the looming cuts this summer. so i want to really thank her and also in the past like to staff for engaging with that group which i think is a really good group for community engagement. >> the upcoming changes on february 1st there are some discussion and i think director gina and director hemminger for making some of these points around the communication of them and i think once thing could be when the announcement went out about the 43 the 38

and i think it was the 24 service reductions midday there was not a specification in there of what that change would be. it did not say i had to call and ask you know, what is the new frequency? i think it went from 12 to 15 minutes for the 43 which runs through my neighborhood and i think just that small change would have kind of alleviated some of the concerns from people. i just had extra transparency so i hope that this process around the summer changes. so this is sort of the first i'm hearing about it but the director hemingway's point like when we have a big issue ahead of us so it's no surprise but i hope to continue to see the type of engagement that has been discussed today and that i've seen especially since you

said it was so important for feedback up and taught. >> so thank you. thank you so much for your comment. next speaker please. >> hi there. i'm bob feinberg. i'm president of save money. i'd like to follow up on director henderson. anne's excellent point in terms of the tellers treat modifications i think that i've seen a lot of the reports that have been done on street modifications and they always deal with a single street. so in this case taylor street is the street of the interest. i understand that. however we have to go further than most traffic engineers when they try to study this subject take into account the

parallel streets. so we're as you may have improvements on taylor street that reduce the accidents on parallel streets. you may increase the accidents and therefore the conclusion that you might draw from just the single street analysis is inaccurate. so i'd like to ask julie for this analysis on taylor street and for every other street improvement analysis is that you include parallel streets so that you can get a real understanding of what the change is have wrought. >> thanks. thank you so much for your coming next speaker please. another speaker card for maria rubio. >> good afternoon. i'm sarah silver from iconic

d3. with all due respect, much of what i've heard today sounds like a myopic echo chamber. out of touch with everyday citizens and their needs. so i'm here to provide an alternate external view of your biking and rolling plan. >> the s.f. mta has long touted its commitment to create the biking program and plans later on in the agenda. do you want to save your comment for that time when i was up if i could do now i have to. >> i have to. are you not able to you can only comment on the directories report. >> all right. thank you. thank you. next speaker please. >> and these are comments just on the directors report. this is item six yes on the directors report. >> thank you. i have to say i sat and and listened with increasing confusion and alarm that the director's report did not address at all the fact that you're facing a $300 million fiscal cliff. i think the only thing that

this body should be talking about right now is how to dig itself out and selling sweatshirts is not going to do it. >> that's fun and cute but you know, 37 minutes into the meeting and we hadn't discussed anything really of substance. we gave some awards and we talked about merch that that that sort of seems to miss the big picture and the plot here which is that you guys are facing a massive fiscal cliff and you need to do something about it. and i echo this gentleman here you need to save money and you need to stop pulling from the muni bucket and funding programs and projects that the city and residents do not want and in fact are harming the city and residents. and in answer to your question, ms. henderson, visions hero has done nothing. i've got a chart that i can bring up at one of my other public comment opportunities. it has done nothing. there has been no appreciable drop in injuries. it's gone up and down.

there's no trend line showing that vision zero has helped at all and in fact i would argue that it has made things quite a bit worse because you have created a lot of confusion and uncertainty on the roads and that is driving a lot of people to to be confused and to have accidents. >> so i highly urge that you focus on what you actually do best which is muni. muni is actually a great system and we should not let it go and you guys are letting it die instead of fixing it and caring for it you're off ripping up streets and creating problems on valencia and then reversing them. >> how many millions of taxpayer dollars did that cost us? >> so can you please stop all the other and fix muni? >> thank you. thank you so much for your coming next speaker please have another speaker card for pamela campbell i support what the

previous speaker said. i want to add that there have been many other make work seemingly make work projects that muni has done that must have cost a fortune that have very little to do with transportation and a lot to do with the war on cars and it's really destroyed my neighborhood, the richmond district and destroyed my lifestyle and created a lot of suffering for me. there are the seniors in this town are like 20% of the city. you can add the disabled who need to drive or have someone drive them. we're not all taking bus busses and riding bicycles here. this is not a bicycle paradise. this is a functioning city and i need to function in it. i need to carry soup to my sister. i don't want to spend 20 minutes circling for parking.

you know i can't even go to snow lake anymore. i have to be driven there because i don't want to be forced on 19th avenue, you know i can't go to the car repair shop in the sunset because what it is to cross from the bridge into the sunset between the road closures, the park closures, this daylighting stuff for people who who never heard look both ways before you cross the street people whose heads are in their cell phones and i think muni should focus on the job of transportation not beautifying that horrible intersection on the sonic in gary where you know like 12 free parking spaces were lost you know and making muni bus stops three quarters of a block long and red riding out you know the day lighting and all that thing you're doing and it just makes him an impossible for a lot of us to function, you know and i have to add 20 minutes to my day to go you know, pick up some produce

and i'm on my time is my life, you know, and i feel very, very damaged and hostile toward muni . thank you so much. and if you would just focus on doing the job of transportation . thank you so much then you wouldn't waste so much other money on this silliness. >> thank you. next speaker please. do you have any additional speakers on item six? >> good afternoon. i drive a car in the city of san francisco. i think we need to have more metered parking so that people who are concerned about the ability to find a parking space when they want to conduct business in the city can find an open parking space. it worked very successfully. we should bring back sun metered parking. i am grateful for the daylight so that my neighbors and children are not killed by

cars. >> i'm sure there rules everybody there not just for cars, also for people on foot bicycles everybody should be able to get around the city safely. >> please continue your work. >> thank you so much for your coming next speaker please do you have any additional speakers on the treasurer's report item six? >> no. any accommodations stretches of surgery so no. >> okay. and with that will no close public comment. >> secretary silva please call the next item places you and item number seven the citizens advisory council report we have no report for today. >> please call the next item places you on item number eight new or unfinished business by board members and we will be doing our election of our board chair and vice chair. i will start the election of chair do we have any nominations for the position of chair colleagues? >> i do have a nomination but

before i go into that i just want to say it has been my pleasure and honor to serve as your chair during this interim period over the last few weeks we went through many, many changes of leadership both internally city wide and now federally. during this time it's been my privilege to work in tandem with julie and mayor breed and mayor laurie's teams during the transition during their transition as well. and i'm so grateful for the care and thoughtfulness both teams have used to sustain the ongoing partnership between the fenty leadership and the mayor's office due to personal matters. i am not seeking the chair seat and so i ask you to if you can indulge me with one more change i would like to nominate director tarlov as chair director to tara love in her tenure has demonstrated a deep commitment to our values. she is the embodiment of being present and we heard so from public comment earlier a moment ago she regularly attends events and functions that help her meaningfully connect with

staff and our valuable work as a small business owner. her insights have been invaluable as we tackle tough decisions and fostered a deeper connection to merchants, patrons and all folks to help our commercial corridors thrive during this moment of change. i know and i am confident that her leadership is what our team needs to ensure we remain laser focused on the agency's sustainability and deepening our connections with our community members and with that colleagues i put forth director charles ives nomination as chair. thank you. do we have any other nominations? >> okay. seeing none i'll close nominations will now open public comment for this portion on the nomination of the chair any members of the public can come to the podium that vice

chair stephanie karina alita dupree for the record she and her team foltz no objections here. >> can't say i've met director tarlov. i know a few of you some for a long time. i think any of you could do this job as chair. that being said, as you step into the chair to remember the things most basic and i don't get to engage with you very often because i have profound disabilities and those can affect whether i'm going to get on a plane to fly up and see you. and sometimes i think about flying up 600 miles to come up and see you and ride muni and maybe fly home that night. it's not easy flying on airplanes. it's not easy using muni sometimes so ask of our

prospective chair to be approachable so i'm simply an ordinary user of muni i'm a kind of person doesn't make the news and but i use the system when i'm here because it's important to me and for me what is muni most to me it's the busses and the trains that's what i use. i've used my drivers license much more for getting through airports than i have and getting behind the wheel in the last decade. so again no objections but it is my hope that i will be able to engage both with your new chair and with all of you respectfully going forward. thank you. thank you. thank you so much for your comment, mr. perry. next speaker hi bob.

i'm down from save muni. i had the pleasure of meeting with director tarlov before she actually took up a seat on this board and i'm very glad to see that she's been such an active member and i would fully support her as chair and we would like to invite you to see beauty as soon as that is possible. >> thanks. >> thank you so much for your call. my next speaker please. >> hi there. i would like to say that i do support director tarlov as the chair of the committee. i appreciate while i am not a big fan of the overall output here, i do appreciate that director tarlov has in the past because i come to a lot of these meetings and i watch expressed at least and understand finding that there are other people in the

city beyond bike riders and that other people should there should be some attention given to them too as well as all of the businesses that are extremely negatively impacted by i-70 on a regular basis. so i appreciate that there is a voice of reason in director tarlov and i certainly hope that if you are the chair that you would really advance that common sense approach for the entire board. >> thank you. thank you for your coming next speaker please do you have any accommodations or accommodations that will close public comment take a vote. let's take a vote. very good on the motion to elect janet tarlov as chair. >> director chen by jenny director hemminger hemminger i director henderson henderson i director hensley i nci director tarlov to vote for yourself i

part of i do winter cooking and i you know i that motion passes congratulations director tarlov okay we'll move on to the election of vice chair oh right. >> i, i seek everyone's forgiveness as i do this for the first time. >> do we have any nominations for the position of vice chair ? i would like to can i. i can just jump in. >> okay. yeah. i would like to nominate for vice chair director kahana so that we can continue to the work that you've certainly laid out for us over the past couple of months as chair and and over

the past couple of years as vice chair and also just to ensure that we have that important community representation and in the work that we do going forward. and so hopefully you're willing to accept that nomination. but yeah, i would like to nominate director kahuna for vice chair. are there any other nominations before we close nominations? i just want to thank director kahana for your support and your encouragement in taking on this role and please know that i will be relying on you this so heavily as i navigate what is a very new role to me. i'm new in government service and and it's your experience is is really important to me and your vision for what we do

as a board is very clear to me and comes from a place of deep knowledge and compassion and and i thank you for your willingness to continue in the role. with that i would like to close nominations and we'll open for public comment. any members of the public can come and comment on this item. >> are there remote? >> no remote we have on public comment. i have two minutes. sweet. >> so how many if you could yes, there we go. >> can you hear me? yep. okay, so my name is angelique mohan. how are you? vice chair sitting chair kena

something something like that. so first of all i'd like to congratulate you on the work you've done. >> it's at this point and i'm very excited that you'll be accepting the vice chair role again. with that being said, i understand that director call will be a business owner. i am a small business owner in the excelsior district which stefanie keenan knows very well as she has served as our director court our director for like four years with it i have five years. yeah. so it's important to me then your role in the mta to be able to take into consideration the impact that muni has along our business corridor which as it has been lately has had some challenges upon the geneva corridor specifically where geneva mission specifically lately with geneva moscow which did not get the outreach to community that we had hoped. and so i hope in your role as vice chair will be able to work with you a little bit more intimately to make sure that those type of things don't happen again. two of our businesses the dark horse that you i know you know

very well as well as gene tilly's will be closing their doors. one of the biggest issues was their inability to be able to have parking as well as movement along a corridor. so these things are important as we move forward as well as being able to expand the scope with trains and things. i understand that was your priority and i hope to see that that will be a for the party as we move forward. thank you. oh, and i support you're okay. >> thank you, angelique. uh, will now close public comment. >> secretary silva, please call the roll on that too. >> on the motion to elect stephanie kahana as vice chair director chen by chen i director hemminger hemminger director henderson henderson i director lindsey i nci director lahaina i know i charter i love

i tarlov i that motion passes congratulations director kahana thank you. >> thank you everyone if i could now please request that director star lovin cooking and take your new seats before we continue the meeting. >> thank you. >> yeah. yeah.

>> all right, directors, is there any additional new or unfinished business? we will now open public comment . >> we could actually close that public comment since there was no additional comment from the board members and move on to the next item. thank you. yeah. places you want item nine general public comment. members of the public may address the board of directors on matters that are within the board's jurisdiction and are not on today's calendar. i do have several speaker cards mark grunberg, alito dupri, bob finebaum, stephanie lehman. >> any of those persons can come up and we could start queuing on the tv side.

>> yeah. board members congratulations chair tarlov mark greenberg with the san francisco taxi workers alliance. so another year has gone by and it's another year with no resolution of the taxi medallion debacle. this has been festering for for a decade or more. there are three main parties involved. one is the city through the mta . >> second is the credit unions that hold the loans for these medallions and the third is the medallion purchases themselves so at least those that are left because as you may be aware over 300 of them have already lost their medallions through default and foreclosure.

the medallions are the only ones in this situation with a personal stake in the matter and yet they don't have a seat at the table. all the litigation all the negotiations are going on between the city and the credit union this needs to be resolved and it needs to be resolved in a way that takes into account the severe pressures on these drivers owing to the huge loans that they have and feeble demand for for taxis that makes their life so very difficult. >> so i would just urge you to get on with it and get on with it in a way that's fair. and just to these taxi drivers . >> thank you. thank you for your comment. i i'm bob finebaum and i was present in november at the

budget working group when julie laid out this scenario possible scenario for cuts that may have to be made in the future years. i can tell you right now those are devastating and we cannot allow them to happen. i think julie agrees with me to that effect save muni has presented the budget working group with 25 recommendations for efficiencies in s.f. mta operations and additional revenue sources without the general tax increase. that document has been sent to you as well. i just like to know at this time whether you have received it and whether you have seen it

. madam secretary, do you know if that has been put in the packet the 25 recommendations from c muni to the budget working group? >> i believe so though this right now is not a question and answer period just for your comment. okay so it has been put in in your my point is this that muni is the priority muni is really what this agency was set up to promote to manage and to deal with everything else is lower priority. we need to be clear that muni is what moves san francisco and if muni is diminished san francisco is diminished. therefore right now to day we have to start conserving money on things that are lower

priority and everything else is lower priority. thank you. thank you for your comment. okay. >> san francisco deserves a cohesive, well-planned transportation strategy developed under stable leadership with clear lines of accountability. the results of the november election made it clear that voters want a government committed to serving with integrity and accountability and s.f. mta is not exempt from that mandate. voters want an agency that can and will be held accountable to its communities and an interim director can help as mta escape that fate making permanent changes to city infrastructure under interim leadership simply continues the disaster legacy of poorly integrated modifications dictated solely by ideology zealots that

ultimately need costly revisions accordingly as if mta should immediately halt implementation of all its projects pending the appointment of a permanent director under permanent new leadership community engagement and a listening tour of residents and businesses should be priority ised over rushing through a hodgepodge of untested unstudied, potentially dangerous and always expensive series of changes. >> residents and businesses have lost faith in us of mta and its bogus data and a new director's first order of business should be to earn back our trust. >> the responsible course of action is to pause implementation of all new proposals until a permanent s.f. mta director can provide the necessary oversight and strategic vision for these significant changes to our city's infrastructure. thank you. >> thank you for your comment for. hi there. so for general public comment

i'd like to say i really think we should reinstate remote public comment because most working people cannot be here at this time and most of they are the ones who are most harmed by a lot of these policies and most impacted by a lot of these policies. >> so i would urge you i know you don't have to but it would be the resident centric thing to do to again, you're facing a $300 million fiscal cliff and i really appreciate director hemminger raising that. >> so a what is the board doing to dig in and restructure b what are you doing to significantly cut costs and i mean significantly we're talking about $300 million fiscal cliff like this isn't nibbling around the edges and selling sweaters. >> see why are you still allowing massive expenditures on unnecessary and ineffective

street changes that ultimately take money from muni d why was the first 37 minutes of this meeting spent giving out internal awards and talking about 65 for dollar sales on your website when you were facing an epic deficit? i just i cannot stress enough this is an all hands on deck situation people i don't understand why this isn't every minute of every meeting i'm not seeing urgency or leadership here on this and hopefully now that there is a chair of this committee there will be some leadership on that. i would love it. you have a fiduciary duty to taxpayers that is not something that's talked about very, very often and it should be you have a fiduciary obligation to us and we need to see and to muni by the way, you have a fiduciary obligation to the institution. we need to see you actually

taking that seriously. >> we thank you for your comment. next speaker please. i echo everything murray just said 37 minutes wasted in the first 37 minutes of this meeting on just irrelevant things that will not get us and mta out of the current right we're facing pretty irresponsible too. >> you guys talk about equality equity and i parked in the marina two weeks ago and paid parking meter was $6.50 cents per hour. where do you guys come up with that number? >> i'm not sure it feels like a lack of transparency there feels like you're trying to get cars out the road by charging more than you should be for an hour a parking the list goes on . you know, i could talk about also the digital monitors.

i'm a bus rider. the digital monitors are have been implemented in certain bus stops but many of them are still not implemented or installed and i believe that project and that money was approved almost over a decade ago now you guys should focus on the basics transit and streets. >> thank you for your comment. next speaker thank you. new chair janet tarlov got to get used to that next time i'll just call you chair because you won't be do anymore. >> you know i'm just ordinary user muni as i said before, i first used the cable cars in 1980 two. >> i think i was here for three nights and it was really i think in 2000 nine i first

started using muni as a larger system. >> my my standing with you is not that long but but i have deep experience in public transportation and going back to early 1970 when i was first introduced to the new york city subway in the 34th street and eighth avenue station it's a c and e service that was 55 years ago. >> i'm dating myself and so much of what i say is framed in the importance of of our vehicular services of our of our busses trains and yes i do right i do use rideshares and i do use those automated cars they run on electricity, renewable electricity and automated cars. they're very nice to me. they even address me by name. i like it when people and things are nice to me but

but we can't drive our way out of our issues which is why i think we really have to focus on our busses and trains and yes we have a subway. it's a subway with little less because the one in new york is the one with the big yes but we can't forget about the basics and how do we go forward. >> i advocate for muni for everyone. >> i think we should bring back remote public comment. i used to call in all the time we have to be more accessible. >> i should be able to call in without having to justify it. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker first of people so i keep this brief i have four things that i consider an issue

and i use that use issue with this small i the first of which is prioritizing busses in transit as i mentioned before in new york city is one that has robust public transportation. it also has 24 hour transportation which muni has not reached that level yet. at one point when i was working second shift i was able to catch a bus home. i cannot do that anymore. that's why i'm relying on my car. >> secondly, streets gap initially when the mta came up with the grand idea of putting in bike lanes and red lanes they said that was temporary and that if it was a problem it was just paint we could pull it up. now throughout the covid pandemic situation we have a lot of hardscape not streetscape which is not easy to remove. that may not work in the best interest of the people who are supposed to serve and it needs to have some sort of flexibility in which if it's not working that it can be removed in any cost effective manner. second of all, my biggest issue is transparency and community outreach.

i know that you guys do your yeoman's best to try and do effective outreach to community some of which people have found it problematic. some non-existent. >> for me it's not a matter of did you do it? it's a matter of knowing who you outreach to and be able to have the transparency, be able to engage as a community to be able to come up with consensus idea about what might be something that's worthwhile? >> and secondly and most importantly speaking with director chan, thank you for coming to speak to us. by the way, director chen is about understanding about what is the mindset of the mta and understanding that the mta in my estimate is just i'm just a taxpayer. >> what do i know is that i thought the idea was to work with bikes and cars not to eliminate one or the other. so i think it's very important that we actually move our mindset towards working in collaboration to make both those things work. >> after all, you are a transportation authority in the greatest city in the world so thank you for your time.

thank you for your comment. next speaker please if there's no one else can i have my cell ? of course. >> hi, my name is mina young. i'm a 40 year resident of san cisco and i'm a member of business and housing network with thousands of mom and pop homeowners and we are having we have a aging population overall and in the city and so we our biggest asset is our people without the people here we don't have mta revenue, we don't have businesses. so how do we help people to stay in the city currently whatever you have been doing seems that you are pushing people out of the city and businesses are not surviving to encourage

businesses to stay in business we need to have people coming come into the town and a lot of my friends refuse to come to city when we have gatherings because it's so difficult to find parking and is so confusing with all the street closed and the different changes they have made and i heard a comment earlier about how people are not appreciating the danger that we are in and especially with the fires in the south and how we as residents in san francisco we are surrounded by water except one way to the south we need to have the roads open to have the escapes for people when this danger so please open all the roads. >> thank you.

thank you for your comment madam would you. >> i'm lucia bogota. i'm an architect and i'm on the mission dolores neighborhood association. and i just wanted to make a quick plea for do something about the 16th street station on mission. >> it's terrifying and people don't know whether what agency polices it. we think it may be you, so please help because it's dangerous. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker first of all i want to comment that most again most working people are not here. i'm a teacher in the san francisco unified school

district. my students use the bus their business of closing roads as as this previous speaker said is very dangerous because we can't get anywhere. we're in the outer richmond. we're now bound in not lake street, not great highway. we have no way to get out. let's say we have an earthquake and the gas lines break. we have fires and we can't get out. but the other part of it is that seems to me that people who are working at home new people who maybe weren't here before. those are the people who maybe don't care about getting kids to school or getting to work and it's the working people of this city who need to have the roads open, all of them and also not to be making it seems like playing in the bicycle. i mean it just seems like they're playing and it's a certain group of people that are not even from here and they're getting listened to and it also looks like going along with the wef plans to have 15 minute cities

and everything it's getting really difficult to drive and in order to be productive everyone needs to have a way to get to work. children need to be able to get to school. thank you very much. >> thank you for your comment. next speaker good afternoon. congratulations to director tarlov and director stephanie i want to say that my name is kathleen gee. i'm a native of san francisco and i'm an old native so i was on busses since junior high high school, even college work and i appreciated the 24 hour busses because i again also worked a swing shift night shifts and it was helpful. >> i would again appreciate if there was able to have people call in from home and i think i

appreciate all your work and i hope you can broker a deal between the bikers and pedestrians and the car drivers everyone needs to be able to use the road safely. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. are there any other comments? >> secretary silva are there any remote requests? >> no remote requests. i think i saw someone raise their hand to comment if there are if there's anyone in the audience that wants to comment they could come up. if not we'll move on. was it oh i get your yeah i'm a it seems sent me and he has tried or seems to have tried for outreach i've sent letters

to supervisors i sent letters to muni people i've sent lots of letters it seems like the steamroller has just gone over my wishes the wishes of people like me. it seems like somebody you know i don't know where it's happening. somebody totally is married to the idea of eliminating cars and also city hall or the supervisors are prostituting themselves to the bicycle coalition which is a minority of healthy young people who bike once in a while and that's not how a lot of us function in the city even you don't have to be old and you can't drive ride a bike. you're a mother taking two children somewhere. you're not going to put them on your bicycle. so there are a lot of reasons we need to respect the need to drive and i understand the global warming concerns. my impression is it's not so

much for my 2000 miles a year that i put on my civic you know, mostly in the neighborhood. it's more from industry and that kind of thing. airplane is big things. it's not little people like me . >> i mean sure i collect my plastic bags and recycle them but okay so the closures in the park, all the elimination of parking spaces, red parking meters everywhere a parking meter that says you can't park here what is going on and with all the closures in the park across the park near the park it's very hard to go to the museum. there are terrific bottlenecks on the few remaining places like 43rd avenue crossing from the richmond to get to the sunset and you know somebody on next door was saying she was driving her car. her dog to emergency.

>> the door wasn't until i was injured and she was a half an hour trying to cross 43rd avenue so and also if you could tell those bicycle people that don't have to take a parking spaces put their bicycle stands ,you know, on the sidewalk. >> madam, i'm sorry your time. thank you. thank you. it's important that we stick to the time for fairness sake. thank you very much for your comment, director kirschbaum i've heard several members of the public bring up 20 four hour service or the lack thereof. do you want to weigh in on that and just maybe clarify some of what service is available overnight thing thank you. muni does operate 24 seven we have a robust owl network that's spaced about half a mile

to three quarters of a mile apart throughout the city and represent some of our busiest corridors. the owl network is has not changed since before covid and in some instances like the 14 mission, the services running every 15 minutes and instead of every 30 minutes which is the base frequency at that time. thank you very much. and just speaking as someone who owned a business for many years and glen park as you know, we had bakers who would be coming to work at often as early as two in the morning or leaving their shift at 1 or 2 and and other many other people in the kitchen who would come at 4 or 5 in the morning

and they many of them relied on those services and it was a very important part of our ability to operate because if all of those folks had to bear the expense of owning a car, they would not have been able to make it work within their within their families. so thanks for touching on that . are there any other comments? >> hi directors. christopher white, executive director of the san francisco bicycle coalition. i was not planning to give public comment during this section but i wanted to address some of the things that have been said so far for framing. >> there are approximately 5600 miles lane miles of road in san francisco and there is maybe 80

ish miles of protected bike lanes, slow streets or car free streets in san francisco. >> yet we know that ten percent of people in san francisco ride their bikes every day 80% of people in san francisco want to be able to make the choice to sometimes ride their bikes and yet only 27% of those people feel safe enough to do so. the people who ride in san francisco are not looking to make people get rid of their cars. >> that's not a thing that's happening. >> what we are looking for is safe real options to be able to ride our bikes safely. family is riding with their children. they ought to ride with their children. >> people who ride their bikes for work to and from work all of these are absolutely the

real necessary things that people need to do and people use their bikes to do it. >> they're not toys we're not playing. this is how we get around the city and you know, two people died on the streets of san francisco last year while biking because of unsafe infrastructure. thousands and thousands of people in san francisco want to be able to make other transportation choices and if we are cutting back on other sustainable modes like transit and believe me we are very pro transit then people need other options to get around the city as well. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. are there any other commenters ? >> i didn't say so earlier but could we please minimize disruptions? that includes clapping. thank you. >> secretary silver, are there any remote callers? >> no callers.

thank you. we will now close public comment on item nine. secretary silva please call the next item. >> director is that places you on item ten your consent calendar. these items are considered to be routine and will be acted upon by a single vote unless a member of the border public wishes to consider an item separately for all speakers providing public comment. >> please identify which item number you are speaking to. item 10.1 requesting the comptroller to alert funds and to draw warrants against such funds available or will be available in payment of the following claims against the s.f. mta. those are listed as items 10.1 a through e and the agenda item 10.2 approving various routine parking and traffic modifications listed under items 10.2 a through c, c and the agenda item 10.3 adopting a resolution of local support for the programing of approximately $400 million of transit capital program tcp

funds for the following projects americans with disability ada paratransit operations light rail vehicle replacement procurement s 40 foot motorcoach replacement prohibits paratransit fleet replacement procurement motor life coach sorry motor coach midlife overhauls phase two charlie coach midlife overhauls phase three train control and signal systems rehab rehabilitation tunnel repairs and rail replacement and preventative maintenance and providing assurances that the mta will comply with the bench. politan transportation commission policies. item 10.4 amending transportation code division two section 301 to clarify the process for updating s.f. mta base fees and fines. item 10.5 amending the transportation code division to article 1100 section 1111113s1b to eliminate the requirement that taxis submit a valid and current brake certificate issued by an official

inspection station certified by the state of california during inspections and imposes a requirement that taxis undergo a 19 point inspection as part of the regular inspection process. that concludes your consent calendar. >> we will now open public comment for item ten the consent calendar. >> i do have one speaker card for item 10.5 for mark gruber. >> thank you again to carla directors mark gruber this time speaking for green cab where i am a driver and helped to manage the company so we i hope you received the letter and had a chance to look at it the letter that i sent over the weekend.

i know that yesterday was a holiday and maybe that forestalled your opportunity to take a look at it. as i said in the letter, this proposal is unnecessary, scary and redundant and burdensome. >> every san francisco taxi is now inspected and will continue to be inspected by supposed ground transportation. unit in addition, taxis have had to get a brake inspection from a licensed mechanic as part of a state certification. >> the state has now replaced their brake inspection requirements with a much more comprehensive inspection designed only for salvage vehicles. so instead of simply requiring g two you to do the break inspection which they haven't been doing because it was unnecessary.

your staff wants to install a completely new requirement a 19 point inspection. it's the same inspection that uber and lyft have to go through but they only have to do that one. we would have to do the two and there's there's just no reason for this. the simple answer is to either have the two you do the brake inspection as well or or simply have cabs go to a licensed mechanic and have the brakes inspected. >> state requirement or not. thank you. >> thank you, mr. gruber. any other commenters on the consent calendar? >> yes. so i would just like to say i

don't think items 10.2 and 10.3 should be on the consent calendar. 10.3 is the expenditure of $400 million. >> a lot of this looks like it's probably i reasonable but we don't know because we don't actually have any detail whatsoever. and it seems like since you're hitting a deficit of $300 million an expenditure of $400 million just sort of casually approved on the consent agenda is probably not a great way to go as far as 10.2 goes. this is the death by a thousand paper cuts that residents are starting to really vociferously object to. you are basically making massive changes on our streets and they're just sort of done at the at the, you know, quick vote of the board without discussing these. you know, for example i'd 10.2

d it's a dead end street this is necessary parking for neighbors what possible reason could this be to make this a red tollway zone. and this is your sneaking in here the same residential street payment scheme that the marina in cow hollow just objected to so angrily. >> so i really have to question why this is on a consent agenda and i think we should stop that and every one of these should be discussed with the public. thank you so much. >> we're here. yes. thank you for your comment. >> are there any other commenters i would double down on what murray just stated a little bit more specifically and the 10.2 section general meeting of parking.

i think it's it in things like this. you know it's it feels like it's more of the same agenda trying to move cars out the roads trying to increase difficulty of traffic flow for people to come into certain neighborhoods and actually get what they need to get done whether it's an errand or visit the area charging for parking like this just feels like an agenda that you know, you're trying to fill the gaps within within your revenue and their budgets by you know got i think bigger picture here in terms of how to actually feel the deficit. >> thank you for your comment. >> next commenter please. hi there. >> i'm here to comment on 10.2. again this is a whole death by paper cuts. and it essentially my objection to this whole area being on the

consent calendar it is incomplete information for the public for what you're doing. often what you have in here are things which are radically removing parking, radically removing the flow of traffic. but all you're doing is a very specific little addition of a tollway zone. you're not stating how many additional parking spaces are being removed from the streets and giving transparency to that. >> thank you. >> thank you for your comment. are there any other commenters on the consent calendar? yes, ma'am. thank you. >> i also agree with the previous three speakers about the death by small cuts. >> and it's hard when you need to have your card at certain places and if you need to park after a certain time if some friends don't have driveways or when you can't park in driveways so if they don't have garages and i would appreciate

more outreach to wider city not just certain neighborhoods when these things come up. thank you. >> thank you for your comment. may i ask if you are planning to speak on item ten our consent calendar that you please line up so that we have a sense of how many folks are seeking to make comment. please ma'am, go ahead. >> hi. i want to make a comment on 10.2. i'm a tour guide and tourism. san francisco used to be number one and now it's it has fallen below number 30 i think and a lot of the tour coach drivers it's getting increasingly difficult to find parks to unload tourists and because the also of the street closures that there's a lot more bottlenecks. >> so now i can't show tourists

golden gate park hardly at all. all i can do since we can't jfk is totally closed. what happens now is that there's such a bottleneck to go into the museums are that pretty much tour guides can't show large groups. golden gate park we could within our schedules it's just really decrease that so we want to make we want to keep san francisco tourist friendly because it's it's a large industry for all of us and helps the small businesses and everything. so i think you've got to be very careful when you're making these massive changes of more residential and and permit parking and reducing the parking. >> thanks. >> may i ask a question, julie i'm not sure if you're the person to answer but i in my in

my time on the board i have this is new to me that that this item 10.2 is is very regular part of our agenda typically and there are is a number of routine changes they've always struck me as routine but it seems like from our public comment today that there's a there's a sense that this is unusual or can you just speak to that also also new to this seat? yeah, but my understanding is that when we put changes like this on the consent calendar, it's because there has already been public noticing and a public hearing that did not generate resident specific feedback.

i think what you're hearing today if i were to summarize is more process feedback about how we as an agency our approaching trade offs between driving and parking and other transportation modes but that that is my understanding that if it is on the consent calendar it has already had the public vetting and an opportunity for feedback. >> and my understanding knowing of my reading of this over over the time that i've been on the board is that many of the items are there as a result of neighbor requests to say for example an extension of a parking residential parking permit area that's typically the agency's response to

requests from from the people who live in the areas is that correct? >> that is certainly one of the reasons why something would be on on the consent calendar. we also respond to feedback for example from our operators if turn is difficult to make or they routinely experience seeing double parking. our transit engineers would work on a roadway change but there's a whole host of reasons something might might be on the consent calendar some of which is by resident and business request right. >> and you know, any request from the public for more transparency seems to be to me to be very important and we need to pay close attention to it. one thing i know from my

experience is that the staff report for this item typically has i wouldn't say it's a great deal more information that there is some more information about each of the items that are agenda ised and as that's my recollection here in this moment it's a lot of material members of the public may not be aware or you know it's it's quite a lot of material that's distributed to everyone all at once including everyone on this board and of course we're charged with going over that very carefully. but members of the public may not do that for very understandable reasons. >> i am i recalling that correctly? that is correct and i believe all the information is available on the s.f. mta website.

>> all right. i'd like to just defer to the city attorney if there's something that i'm missing that i should be any actions that i should be taking. >> no, thank you. and i just like to acknowledge the public comment and thank members of the public for coming to make it was there there were important points in there about transparency c and concerns at the public level over loss of parking and these are these are important matters that this board is paying attention to in addition to our deficit and transit that we are that we are responding often to other things that may not be happening here at at the mta board hearing but that our

publicly noticed hearings that happened in addition so and other other means so thank you very much for your comments . what's next? if there are no further comments i'd like to close public comment at this time secretary silva and then ask for a motion on the consent calendar. >> okay. thank you. may i please have a motion on the consent calendar? >> removal of all items second the secretary silva please call the roll. absolutely on the motion to approve the consent calendar director chen by chen i director hemminger hemminger director henderson henderson i director kinzie i the director coquina i coquina i charter those i tarlov i thank you the

consent the consent calendar is approved secretary silva please call the next item places you on item number 11. presentation and discussion regarding a state of good repair report directors are there any clarifying questions on the state of good repair report? >> look first let's have our presentation. i'm sorry about that. go ahead. thank you. >> can everyone here? >> yep. >> good afternoon board. my name is jason chen, the lead analyst for sfm t for asset management. >> so today i'll be presenting

the of repair report for reporting year 2023. so in this presentation we'll discuss the condition of our assets and the financial recommendations to keep them in good shape or lay out the agenda for this meeting as well. we cover a lot of material. i want to make sure everything is organized and easy to understand so please hold all your questions till the end. so we'll start with the introduction in and we'll describe the assets that we have assembled here and also explain how condition scores work followed by condition data. >> we'll break down the condition of our assets and what percentage of our assets are in a state of good repair followed by financial data which includes the current costs as well as future costs. and then we'll go into the current state of our good repair projects and the conclusion so the key takeaway

before we are as we begin which is our assets are old and we require a large financial investment over time to remain functional and the rest of this presentation including numbers and data to back up this statement and it's then on to the introduction. >> so we manage a large variety of assets. we break our assets into ten asset classes. this includes more straightforward asset classes such as light rail vehicles, motor coach vehicles and overhead lines and then we have an asset class called other systems and vehicles which consists of electrical or electrical system traction power maintenance vehicles and then parking and traffic includes parking garages, right lanes for busses and traffic signals and then facilities and crews for building

and maintenance shops that we own. so what assets do we maintain? so as you can see on the screen is a lot of examples of that different assets that we that we manage we take a little closer i mean each classified or recast of our assets into transit service circle and other state repair assets so transit service kroger's are name suggests are essential for functioning for for the functioning of our transit system and includes assets such like traffic light rail vehicles and busses, other state repair assets might include bikeways or decorative street lighting are an important aspect to know is each of our assets have a useful life useful life basically says how long an asset lasts until it needs to replace so for example light rail vehicles we have a useful life of 25 years. we have facility components

with a useful life of 25 to 50 years chair fixing goals 30 years bikeways seven years and track is 20 to 30 years. >> so what is a good asset repair? >> are we rate our assets on a scale of 1 to 5 of one being poor and five being excellent. we currently use age based conditions scoring we so as the assets age the scores gradually decrease. a state of good repair is considered and you score above two and a half and up so scores are calculated based on useful life remaining and when the asset is put into service. so one track asset is 25 years old and it has a useful life of 20 years that asks what would be in a poor condition but of the track assets actually ten years old it's still marginal and is in a state of good repair so on two condition data

so these are the percentage of assets that are in a state of good repair across all assets and transit service critical assets they grieve represents condition scores but above two and a half the represents scores are assets below two and a half the black dotted line represents assets currently in a state of good repair which corresponds to that green color. so you can see 59% of all our assets are currently in a state of good repair and 72% of our transit service critical assets are necessary to repair. >> so when looking at our assets across all our asset classes as i mentioned earlier, assets can be in marginal condition. >> it's still being considered an esthetic or repair. our large percentage of assets have lower condition scores even if they are not or even if they are in a state of good repair. so as you can see many of our

assets are in a poor marginal and adequate condition totaling 80% of all of our assets and 84% of our transit service critical assets. so this is because like we mentioned in the beginning many are many scores are based on age and many of our assets are old and as you can see here, only a small amount are actually an above or excellent condition asset or condition scores. so we also look at assets or if we look at assets only a nest egg or pair. so these are just the assets are two and a half and above you can see we have a we have many or many of our score or many of our condition scores may be close to falling out of repair without investment. >> so you can see 23% of all our assets and 24% of our transits critical assets are

marginal and are closest to falling out of repair. >> so later in this presentation we'll discuss future investment needs and these numbers will be reflected in the costs so we can also break our state of good repair numbers by asset classes so we can see the percentage of each asset class that are currently in a state of repair. >> so the green represents assets with a score above two and a half and the red represents with a score under two and a half and a black box represents assets that are currently in a state repair. >> so you can see other systems and vehicles parking and traffic and track have the highest percentage of assets currently not in a state of good repair. that 40% that you see for other systems represents over 300 million parking in traffic at 61% is over 1.1 billion

and track is currently they are currently not in a state of repair is over 350 million as we can see here we look at condition scores a lot of our assets are in a state or paris still have a higher percentage of assets are in a marginal condition. these what reflect in future numbers. >> so when you look at it this way you'll see that parking and traffic citations and track has the highest percentage of assets that are in poor and marginal condition. >> so although you see that a lot of it isn't currently in the red alive is still approaching and as they're approaching the score of two and a half or less so you have 69% for parking and traffic which represents over parking traffic actually that actually

represents over $1 billion stations at 48 or 67 percent is also over $1 billion and track at 82% which represents over $900 billion. >> so if we go now or discuss the financial data when asset condition scores go below two and a half its value gets added to our backlog. the backlog can be considered the valuation of assets not in a state of good repair. we currently manage over $16.9 billion worth of assets with 5.2 billion or 27% of our asset value currently in the backlog and of that $5.2 billion 43% are considered transit service critical assets. >> so we can look at the

backlog by asset class. the orange represents transit service critical assets and the blue represents other assets. >> the parking and traffic and facilities have the highest backlogs at 1.1 and 1 billion respectively. we overhead has the highest transit service critical backlog at 120 million. >> so examples of assets in backlog for parking and traffic would be the parking garage assets and overhead might be charlie charlie wire. >> so a number of assets in the backlog currently past their useful life. so if the useful life of track is 20 years and the track is 25 years old it's past its useful life. so of the $5.2 billion backlog 3.5 billion or 68% 68% of our assets are currently passed or used for life. so this is for investments needed the most as there are conserved. our oldest assets.

so now let's take a look at of empty assets total asset valuation over time so we can see as time goes on we complete big projects like the central subway and our asset valuation goes up so more assets mean more maintenance and more replacement costs in the future. so the dip in 2018 is actually due to actualization data for both our revenue and our revenue data. our fleet and then 2023 the biggest increase was due to the central subway being added to our inventory. so in this chart this illustrates our past spending trends are state of the art repair projects. >> the yellow line represents the 250 million spending commitment that we made to the fta when we started the central

subway project. we can see our spending went down during the pandemic due to a lot projects being delayed and then as a research aged after we had or after after the pandemic basically so the asset management unit analyzes different spending scenarios over the next 20 years. >> so this is the inverse triangle of showing our four are our spending needed over the next 20 years to achieve each priority for asset replacement and eliminating the backlog $950 million per year uh and the cost to replace just our transit service critical assets is four. we need to spend at least $424 million per year on the next slide will we'll see how this chart is done over a 20 year replacement schedule.

so these are the expenses that the expected replacement schedule cost over the next 20 years. so that means the assets that need to be replaced or maintained each year the orange represents the transit's critical assets and the blue represents up the other assets . for example, we remember the assets that are currently in a marginal condition. we can see that these need to be replaced or updated in the next in the coming years. so that's 2024 to 2029. so now let's take a look at the average spending targets from the previous slide. so you'll see we're 424 million lives for our transit critical needs if we want no growth in a backlog by continue our replacement cycles will need at least 655 million dollars per year to reduce our current backlog by 50% and maintain our

replacement cycles. we'll need at least $785 million per year. and then for for asset replacement and elimination of backlog is down 15 currently over the last nine years we're spending about $303 million on state of the art repair activities. >> so our current projects we recently completed the travel project which included replacing and rehabbing the rails overhead lines and repaving the entire city of travel. >> here's the before picture and here is the after. >> so the data reflected on next year's state of good repair report since it just recently completed and then a recently started project is the curriculum bus maintenance facility where will be renovating the facility to support battery electric busses

and repaving repaving the roads and building a new car wash or bus wash and also enhancing the maintenance facility itself and then one ongoing maintenance project which was highlighted earlier is the mid-life overhauls. >> so it's been a huge success in keeping our fleet in our fleet in a state of good repair bus breakdowns were 175% higher in 2014 than they are today. in 2014 the average age of our rubber tire fleet was 12 years old but we reduced it by two seven years old and stabilized the age of our fleet by spreading out the procurements or procurements or purchases of new busses. so every canceled these midlife overhauls and delayed bus replacement bus replacements will expect the corrective maintenance costs to increase

significantly over a five year period. >> so in conclusion 41% of our assets representing $5.2 billion are currently not in a state of good repair 23% of our assets in esthetic repair are close to being are close to losing that status and to replace our transit service critical assets we'll need at least 425 $424 million per year on average. so our aging transit assets need prioritization priorities ation to ensure safety and reliability before investing in new ones and that's the end. so i welcome any questions and comments. >> thank you. thank you very much mr. chan directors, are there any clarifying questions on the state of good repair report

director hemminger thank you madam chair. >> i want to try to knit two subjects together. the first is the operating shortfall that we're facing and i'm sure you know where i'm going on this but the question is are we in a position to convert any of those funds which is allowable under the law to operating purposes from capital? and i'm having a hard time discerning from the data whether we're in good shape or bad shape. you know, i've been looking at your face for a tell, you know, like in poker and i wouldn't want to play poker with you so what i'm looking for now is some sense of are we in a bad

position? i mean you never want to do this because it's like eating your seed corn but we may have to consider it given how deep the budget deficit is and when you indicate that we're at about 72% of our transit critical assets are in a state of good repair that frankly that number is higher than i thought it would be. >> and when i look at the numbers of annual state of good repair spending, you know you've gone from a high of 400 million pre-covid down to 174 in covid and now you've jumped back up to close to 350 million bucks or so. so again, premise is never a good time to do this. but if we need some portion of this to solve the operating

shortfall, are we in a condition to take that loss? i would say that we are barely treading water and the assets that are most at risk are the least modular. so a decade ago we were facing our vehicles as being the most out of a state of good repair and that was creating a lot of one off negative experiences for our customers because a bus would break down and then they would have to get to a new one. it becomes a very different situation when it's the overhead line or the track because it affects every user not just the user on a single vehicle. that being said, as you know we are going to have a series of

bad choices that we have to make to close the deficit and so we have as part of the muni funding working group analyze ised what are our opportunities to shift capital to capital to operating and it is one of the things we will be seeking policy guidance on. the intent of this work is as is not to overwhelm but to explain that in addition to needing sustainable operating dollars we also need sustainable capital dollars so that we can continue to operate safely and efficiently when assets start to deteriorate you're you're spending a lot

more money to get the same or in some cases worse outcomes. >> usually when you say our assets aren't modular are you talking about like the parking garages i was talking about for example a train versus the track but a single train if it is malfunctioning can be managed as part of the the fixed infrastructure. it when it breaks down is much more impactful in my opinion because i mean those kind of facilities do make up a per a very large share of our shortfall and of our deferred maintenance and one thing we could do is unload them on somebody else and put the land to better use and i know we've had an analysis done of what that might look like citywide and we've even got the beginning of a priority list

for where we would start and we've started with potrero . >> i just you know, short term maybe that doesn't help us a whole lot but long term i wonder whether we're giving enough attention to the potential of reusing some of our assets and putting them to better use. >> i think that's a great series of questions and at the february 4th meeting we will be bringing you a final draft of a joint development policy. it builds on what we shared with this mta board in october and it does really look at how we leverage our existing assets as a potential sustainable source for for investment and i think in particular perhaps at

least initially capital investment because the facility rebuilds can help us with some of our regulatory requirements for electrification and as well as some of the seismic and structural challenges we have. >> and it's good to hear. thank you, madam chair. thank you. director hemminger director henderson i was hoping you could help me understand a couple of things. one for the i think it's like 34 let's just take fiscal year 2023 there was 331 million that was spent and i'm curious about the percentage of the sources that or where did the sources come from that allowed the agency to spend there and you know, was it mostly general fund? was it this covid relief that came before or is it from the

farebox or how do you come up with that number? the majority of our our capital program is not funded with sources like the general fund or fares. it comes from either federal and state money oftentimes provided by formula or it comes where we have competed really successfully for a competitive grant and okay and so essentially in order to be able to spend the minimum amount to to to maintain the state of good repair, we are reliant on some generally some outside source outside of san francisco source we we also get two

additional pretty significant sources. one comes from the half cent sales tax that is managed by the transportation authority. we are one of many agencies that draws resources from that funding as well as prop b funding which is a small amount that does come by fixed formula from the general fund. >> okay. all right. thank you. that's i think then it's helpful. that's helpful to know because then i imagine that's what the funding group will be talking about but also then what we'll be planning for for the next uh two years. >> okay. all right. thank you. thank you. director henderson, director lindsey yeah, i kind of have a couple similar a similar follow

on questions to director hearing and director henderson refresh my memory, jason do we have a if i recall correctly we have a minimum that we're required to spend not for the good repair, correct. >> before we did what was it's 250 million per year and we've currently been spending on average for the last nine years are averaging 303 million. >> okay so a little bit over and and then when you say that we are i haven't i could have looked at his reports but are we trending up or down or stay about the same in our in our data in our score where relatively around the same but we're attending lower right now

okay and that's just because our our our assets are not being tended to are aging we're not we're not and we're going on getting less bang for our buck where we are investing now are we we're just creating more water basically being yeah yeah they i yeah okay and then i think i do it'll be an interesting congress session how we sort of started to have that the the funding working group about you know what our what what the group at least what the group is willing is would have been to to like the spending and so we're different than who we are and i'm sure i'm eager for that conversation but i do think that once that happens then that group we

should be prepared for similar items to come before the board to have that conversation as well. a larger group every then whatever we do here it is going to be a trade off because we do need those assets to be in in a state of good in a in the parent a voice channel what trying to tell one who used to say that he never wanted to give up on in a deferred me so i would you have that sort of ringing in my head during this item that thank you after thank you director hennessy any other clarifying questions from the board? i just would like to chime in a tiny bit before we go to public comment just to this is my

first opportunity as chair and i'm certain it won't be my last to thank directors hemminger and hensley for your work on the muni funding working group. i have listened into all of those meetings. they are extensive, they are very challenging but i'm very appreciative of the comptroller's office assistance with you know, designing for us a process that is transparent and and thorough to discuss how we will solve for this and i, i just want to say, mr. chan, i don't think we're going to be able to provide nine hundred

and $15 million for full asset replacement. but i would like to just say that i, i think that even as we talk about the very serious nature of our situation, a situation that is shared by many transit agencies throughout the nation, i have a tremendous amount of faith in us as a san francisco community to find solutions that will allow for robust transit service that is not compromised by what is you know, we've had some serious speed bumps with the pandemic but i really have a lot of faith that we can come together as a city to solve for this because the the need for

robust transportation both for our housing needs and for our business needs the economic vitality of the city are i think very clear and apparent and i've heard it throughout comment today and and i, i just don't want to forget to as we you know, face the painful realities forget that we can make decisions that lead to a much more hopeful scenario in the future. >> with that i would like to go to public comment and if i could ask members of the public who would like to make comment for this item to line up just

so that we have a good sense of how much time this will take. >> thank you. yeah. hi bob. fine but i'm glad to hear julie that your are looking at joint development arrangements for some s.f. mta facilities as it was one of save you needs major comments and i hope that results in significant revenue increase this bad news so how can i say this although the report was a very thorough and interesting report nobody in industry uses age based measures for this kind of a report. >> they always are now turning to condition based measures and they use that because it is

a much more accurate way of defining what the needs capital needs are. so i would suggest to mr. hemingway's comment that perhaps the report is understated in terms of the capital needs for the agency going forward. and i would also perhaps suggest that you have a workshop with some industry folks, maybe somebody from chevron and somebody from some big companies and find out how they measure their assets and their quality and condition of their assets and when it's necessary to replace assets. >> thanks. thank you mr. fine them. >> good afternoon tom and elovitch. yeah, i. i spent more time looking at

transit agency budgets than anyone really should. but one of the things that i've learned is there's a very dynamic relationship between capital budgets. we tend to like put these in different silos between capital budgets but operating budgets and maintenance budgets and if you're smart you can look for opportunities especially on your capital projects to save yourself money down the line and i think you have some of those opportunities before you are seeing a lot of the deficits are in kind of the parking and traffic side traffic signals are amazingly expensive. it's like what half a million quarterly in a pop i sure if you look at a lot of your deteriorating assets it is traffic signals but things you have a lot of streets that don't need to be signalized like every time i met valencia and makeup and i'm like why is there a traffic signal here? right? like and i know the way there was a cop and used to be a four lane street used to go through before we built the central freeway but now it ties in. it's a quiet intersection that could be a four way stop just saved you half $1 million. there's plenty more on valencia

like 19th and valencia that could be a four way stop, etc. so valencia you know, 30 years ago was a traffic arterial for lanes of high speed traffic. it's now people in bike oriented street you don't need to signalized every intersection you probably do need to signalized your you know major arterials you need to signalized maybe your muni priority routes so muni can get through. we have a lot of extra traffic signals. >> same thing with your bike network. we you know if bikes are operating on a road well you've engineered it for road you've engineered it for you know vehicles that way thousands of pounds if you separate your bikeways you can do really thin asphalt or concrete and it'll last a lot longer. so it's a one time capital expenditure that saves yourself tons of maintenance down the road. >> so i'd love to see how you're thinking about strategic and capital investments from capital money's available that save you operating costs and maintenance costs down the road because i think there's a lot of those. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker please.

oh oh set the right height. thank you chair janet tarlov and members alita dupre for the record she and her what team voltz representing skirt falls i think capital funding should be sacred and we have to remember things that are not seen and i ask that you not be in a vacuum about this. >> i don't know what the how much keep up with it but i remember very painfully this past july a fire in a bart electrical facility in downtown oakland in which two trains had to be evacuated a couple of months ago in new york there was an electrical facility underground in which the door was blown off and several subway trains had to be

evacuated including two from the tunnels. >> so i guess what we learned from other systems and be willing to exchange ideas and i mean don't get me wrong i enjoy bart. i go to their meetings. i probably speak more bart than anybody else and i like muni almost as much as i like the new york city subway which says a lot. >> but how do we exchange ideas the importance of keeping up with this the things that we can't see you know grand central terminal which is a legendary and historic railroad station located in new york city, is a big beautiful architecturally signifi cant building but they have to spend a lot of money to fix the train shed. >> that's where the trains are. what would grand central terminal be without the trains and all the millions of people here that use that station? i ask that we consider capital funding to be sacred and of

high priority. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker please. i. >> are there any remote requests or no? secretary silver i think i'm using the wrong term for that. there is a certain accessibility for the on the there are accommodation requests accommodation requests. >> thank you very much i. with that we will close public comment for this item since it was an informational item there will be no vote and secretary silver will you please call the next item? >> very good places you on item number 12 presentation and discussion regarding the biking and rolling plan. okay

great. >> okay go ahead. good afternoon board members. my name is christy osorio. >> i'm the project manager on the biking and rolling plan. >> today i am joined by community partners and colleagues to present a deeper dive in a two pieces of the plan. reminder this is just an update. >> the two pieces are the community action plans and the decision making framework for how and when projects will be implemented. >> when we were last here in november we gave you a first look at the plan. an overview of our engagement process and a first look at the north star map and as a reminder the north star is a long term aspira ational goal and it's high level. >> it's really meant to inspire and in this case it's really to offer more transportation options in the future. >> the long range plan orients us towards that goal and it talks about how we get there and who were centering along the way. >> one of the most transformative aspects of this plan is that we centered

communities that have historically been left out of bicycle planning in san francisco. so today you'll hear directly from those community partners on why it was important for them to participate in this process and how our agency can build trust and support their thriving. >> as we identify new ways to work together, yeah. >> you'll also hear about the decision making framework for how and when projects will be implemented so a reminder that this plan is a goal. it does not exclude cars from any street in san francisco and all future projects that cite this plan must still go through its own review process and approval process. >> so in november you asked us about community readiness. >> so today we're ready to present what that means and what the roles and responsibilities of both staff and the border in determining community readiness. >> this is also meant to be a dialog so we'd like to know your thoughts about what community readiness means to you and how staff should balance outreach and community

engagement in implementing this plan by having an open dialog around our decision making process here at the board we create transparency for what we for what's next and we invite feedback for how to proceed. >> so the objective today is to get agreement on the decision making framework so that when we return in february for plan adoption we have a clear path for how to move forward so now i will hand it to my colleague ben frazier and he will introduce our community action plans. >> thank you, christy and it's a pleasure to be back speaking in front of you all this afternoon. so first i'm going to provide a little brief overview of the community action plan process and then i'll introduce the two communities the community based organization speaking here this afternoon. the community action plans are a culmination of years of work and engagement with the within the six communities to create holistic plans that accurately

capture the needs and desires of each of these communities the policy program and infrastructure recommendations in each plan were developed by the community and then reviewed and organized by staff and this was a very important step as these plans contain holistic community created and driven recommendation. but not all of them are actionable or the responsibility of the sfm to and this can include items for other city departments like bike lane and street maintenance for public works development, land use and gentrification concerns for city planning or even more complex items like sidewalk maintenance by by private property owners dealing with unaccepted streets and many other items. this process also facilitated many good conversations with these community groups to help them understand what those potential next steps are, who the important actors are, what kinds of funding policy technology or even contractual limitations those

recommendations may encounter as they move towards implementation and most importantly a recognition that adopting these action plans next month is not necessarily changing a bunch of policies or adding a bunch of recommendations or new projects but rather it solidifies the foundation with which mta and the city should continue to work with these groups based off of their priorities that they have identified through the agreed upon methods and processes that they also documented in these plans. and so while potential adoption of these plans next month would only approve the items that a78 could act on, it was critical for the community acceptance of these plans to not only keep those items in because of their importance to the community but also to signal to these communities that while we can't be the lead agency on them, we as an agency are willing and prepared to help support and facilitate progress on

those items as best as we can as i mentioned when i spoke before you in november rebuilding trust is accomplished by actions and not words and these community action plans lay the foundation of how these communities want us to act while in the short term change may be slow and might be delayed for any number of reasons, we need to continue the hard work of slowly rebuilding that trust and we as an agency and a city should be striving to work towards implementing these plans. >> it won't happen overnight but progress and trust is a slow road and together i know we as an agency can get there. >> so now i'd like to introduce our first community group new new community leadership foundation from the west in addition in fillmore with majid crawford, crawford and erica scott. >> hi, my name is majid crawford, executive director the new community leadership foundation and i want to thank the commission for this really incredible opportunity for

communities that's been harmed by past transportation and policies to create solutions that that could really be implemented in writing into the cities process. so i was born and raised in the fillmore. i'm going to be brief but i just want to kind of give you the context of why this is important. >> fillmore in the 60 was a thriving community. >> people walked, people biked, people loved just to browse around. there were small businesses lined up and down the street everywhere the african-american community owned homes owned businesses up and down the street. it really was what biking and walking was really about at the time. unfortunately at the time the government didn't see the african american community or the japanese community as desirable. and so the first showing of that reality was a very violent

transportation policy that took place to widen geary street. >> tens of ten thousand people were displaced. hundreds of businesses bulldozed over 108 acres bulldozed of commercial and residential land in order to widen geary street. and the reason for widening geary street was so that folks that live on the west side of san francisco get downtown a little bit faster. and our needs were of no concern and it created a big wall between the african-american and japanese and jewish communities that really create a powerful at the time a powerful connection and network of community that that a freeway was built right through that. but unfortunately the transportation land use policy didn't end there. the next phase was to actually go into the fillmore and bulldoze 40 square blocks. and this displaced tens of thousands of people, thousands of businesses destroyed and a

community that walked biked a family just went to just up and down the street overnight became a huge parking lot now and then high rise housing projects were built to hold people while the city decided to rebuild. unfortunately it took decades for that the city to rebuild. and so imagine a mother needing to walk a few blocks to the store and she has to walk through a vacant lots on both sides. it's a scary thing. and so our our neighborhood went from this vibrant walkable community to a wasteland. and now we had turk golden gate fell and oh, now they became these high speed freeways. and so now people who are going to the west side didn't have to slow down for a mother and her kids going to the store or a bunch of kids riding bikes. so now our community became a freeway.

and so we were forced as a community out of off of our bikes, off our feet into cars. our community policies at the time where we were the ones walking and biking we were forced into our cars decades on by with slow development. the tragedy continues because the violent land use policies has created massive poverty and massive displacement. i don't really call it gentrification because it wasn't gentrification has a kind of a natural feel to it. this was this is this is a displacement of government sponsored displacement. and now our community has been displaced and we're pushed out. and we need to come to the city now to see our families to be part of our social networks. and now that we need to get to the community now traffic is slowing down, right? no more high speed traffic. you know our community now that that now that we're displaced not at the african-american

community that long longer in the inner cities as before. and i'm a i'm a wrap it up now traffic is slow so this our plan is not about saying we don't want bicycles. we just don't want our neighborhood to go from a car highway to a bicycle highway. because i've done i've done studies about i watch the bike lanes and the traffic calming happened on the on the parts of the west. in addition fillmore there have been heavily the demographic change as a driver of graphic change in the fillmore on the outskirts you see the traffic calming. so now we're saying we're not against bikes, we're not against we want to be safe too but we want to do it now in a way that doesn't hurt and harm us. we harm us again. we don't want them to turn on neighborhood to a bike highway . and when i stand there on the wiggle and look through who's who's willing to from the west side again to downtown is not our community. so this plan is not about saying no to bikes. it's about saying yes the bikes but but it's institutionalized in a way to create a culture in

our community to make our community feel safe again. getting on bikes and walking. so that's what our plan is about is about undoing that damage. diversifying our modes of transportation in in a way that doesn't harm us or doesn't feel like it's being shoved you know ,being done. and i'm just so grateful this commission because this isn't the same commission as in the 60s. >> this is the same group of people that i'm really just excited about this opportunity and i want to and i want you all to tell us what other ideals we save from them because you know, i know you all have you know i know you all have the red pen and i want to i'll put to use with us to make make our plan even stronger as i'm sorry it took a little longer than i wanted to and i'm will have erica with honey our studio share as well yeah thank you so much majid and i agree and speak to the commission and say thank you and i really say thank you to christy and the team at sfm to who took a huge leap to even create an opportunity for communities of color to be

engaged in policy making as it relates to transportation in san francisco. >> my name is erica and i grew up here in san francisco. >> um yesterday was very significant as we honor dr. king and just watching some of the documentaries and listening to his speeches we've come so far we still have a long ways to go and um, i say that because uh, i grew up here. >> my mom owned a business here . we owned property and so it looked a lot different for a lot of my neighbors and my peers. >> and even with that type of upbringing, um, i never knew that there was an inclusive process and understanding how policies are made especially as it relates to transportation. so it was very new and exciting for a lot of our community

members to participate in the conversations in the sessions we hosted bike rides throughout the city um things that we had not done as children. we grew up riding bikes, we got bikes for christmas like everybody else. >> it just changed in adulthood and how do you transition to having to work and having kids and different things like that as it relates to continuing to ride bikes? so like i said, we're not against bike riding. it's just that the the um the makeup of our communities have been harmed and in that um our options are sometimes limited and i would like to ask that the commission takes very serious li the recommendations that we created through a two year process with community members expressing their their excitement, their concern,

their recommendations as it relates to biking in the city and in our neighborhood and we also again i just acknowledge that this is a new process and we're very grateful for to have hosted this process and we just wanted to to continue as policies are made and we would like for city to support the effort of bridging the communities together because there is a bike community and then there are natives from the city who are not anti bike. >> it's just been an exclusive community that we felt left out of and decisions are made for us without our knowledge or consent. so again we're thankful very thankful for this process and we would just love for it to continue. >> thank you. >> thank you so much erica and majid.

the next group we're going to talk about is in the tenderloin at the last meeting in november, eric rozelle from the tenderloin community benefit district spoke spoke of you all and and provided his story in the tenderloin story. so i'm just going to quickly summarize a couple of the highlights in their action plan. so a couple of the main points of their action plan included creating safe and accessible environments for all residents and community members, reducing conflicts between people walking and rolling on the sidewalk, prioritizing, prioritizing that space for people on the sidewalk who are walking or using mobility devices and lastly enhancing street safety and maintenance for all for all road and sidewalk users. >> next i'd like to talk about the soma the plan for soma. this was created in partnership with soma filipinas. >> unfortunately their director had a 3:00 appointment and couldn't hang around to speak this afternoon so similarly i'll just share a couple of highlights from their action plan. so similarly some of their some of their best, some of their

top priorities included working towards keeping bikes and scooters off of the sidewalks because they have a very high proportion of elders and seniors walking so they do research. we're looking to keep those modes separated and keep the rolling devices on the street prioritizing that space on the sidewalk for the seniors and those using canes or walkers and other similar mobility devices and they wanted to prioritize to make sure that new projects incorporate cultural and community aspects and placemaking whenever possible. >> so whether that's decorative crosswalks, murals or other forms of public art just to really hone in on it is the filipino cultural district. so those should come through in all of the projects and as i mentioned earlier, pedestrian safety, pedestrian safety, pedestrian safety that was the number one thing that came out of the soma plan as the big emphasis on pedestrians there. and now i want to talk about the mission and excelsior plan. >> so for that i'll hand it over to jose fernandez from port air.

>> hi there. my name is jessie fernandez. i'm the program coordinator for bicycle pueblo, which is a program of both the air and environmental justice organization here in san francisco. i started this bike program as a volunteer. it was just kind of the perfect convergence of bicycles and environmental justice and immigrants rights and came as a volunteer mechanic and i have been able to kind of step into a role as a staff member worn different hats and now am privileged enough to be in this coordinator role, this program is rooted in, you know, the principle of solidarity and an alternative to a really extractive extractive economy that over the years has evolved to really hold space for big

bipoc riders in san francisco at the onset of this process we were really compelled by the centering of community led participatory planning principles and an orientation around repairing harm themes and a history that is very true and deeply in the mission and the excelsior and over those two years just led to i think a really powerful visionary community engagement process centering the voices of young people families new and returning riders who are being courageous enough to try rolling in their neighborhoods. and we had a lot of really beautiful kind of workshop community events, bike rides to really kind of solicit the kind of feedback that we feel like is really important and we

heard a lot heard a lot of different things also that weren't just about biking. so it was a very i would say intersectional offering that we have in this biking and rolling plan for example the theme and issue of multimodal travel you know of course we talked about bicycles and we have a lot of really powerful recommended actions to have you know, points of access that are ,you know, community oriented that are experiential. so we moved bikes out of our community bike shop spaces and a lot of times it isn't enough to just give someone a bike. there's a lot of fear, a lot of concern, a lot of trepidation around traffic issues and that's all just founded. and so having those spaces where folks can ride with others to either ease those

nerves, learn the ropes, figure it out is critical but people also rely on the bus in our communities and we heard that loud and clear. and so we have, you know, rail workhorse lines kind of moving through the mission in the excelsior and people rely on that, you know, far and away over bicycles and we need to be thinking about those intersections as well as driving people drive a lot more than they maybe want to and such a critical kind of trade offs and decision making. so we need to have real processes that don't blindside folks and from the conversations and public comment today i think that we can agree on that. i would say also enforcement was a big theme. so thinking about rolling red lights riding on the sidewalk,

not riding with a light or helmet on these are things that are issues of access, that are issues of safety, you know, behavior that people participate or you know, behavior that people do because they're not safe riding on the street and that's something that they can be penalized for and disproportionately so if you're a person of color exposure to harm. so looking at the major gaps particularly in the southeast side of the city where you're just much more facing exposure to high traffic conditions and really making sure that we're moving forward in a way that is equitable and bringing folks along into this network that is going to be a that is a citywide network and then of course access, you know, language access is huge in the mission district 11 in particular which is boasts i think the highest proportion of

limited english proficient you know, non-native residents in san francisco and this is critical but also thinking about access in terms of space and so you know, as beautiful as golden gate park and great highway is you shouldn't have to go all the way to that part of town to just be in a space where you're free from traffic live traffic conditions and so just really being able to make sure that we have access across the city especially in working class communities is you know, a central part of our plan. so that's a little bit of what i have to say. thank you very much. thank you so much, jesse and last and the last area and group we want to talk about is bayview hunters point. and so in the bayview we worked with bayview hunters point community advocates. unfortunately karen pierce called out sick this morning so

i have to provide another quick summary of some of what some of their what some of their top priorities were and some of their top priorities included increasing the reliability of all transportation options with name within the neighborhood driving transit, walking, biking everything is so kind of intermittent and kind of patchwork in the beach just giving some sort of uniformity and consistency across across the neighborhood as there is a special emphasis on supporting youth and how we could really incorporate them both into the planning and making sure that the facilities also served their needs as well and also just generally making sure that all of our planning efforts are multimodal and not just focused on one particular mode. >> and so to kind of wrap everything up and tie it all together you've heard from two groups today and you heard from the tenderloin in november and just kind of based on the community action plans, it's quite clear that you know the history and the needs of these six neighborhoods are each

unique and different and working towards stability and an improved quality of life will require six different strategies. >> but despite the differences they were many similarities across the groups including priorities and improved sidewalk conditions particularly for people walking and people using mobility devices like seniors making sure that planning efforts are comprehensive and both look at not just multiple modes but all of the different aspects of planning that intersect with transportation and as jesse just talked about and also every community to say that a clear desire to improve connectivity both within their neighborhood but also the connections to it and from it and the mta should be a partner with them for all of that. and with that i'd now like to hand it over to christine to talk about the northstar network. >> thanks, ben. so now i'm going to transition the conversation from community action plans to implementation or how and when we're going to start implementing the biking

and rolling plan. >> so as a refresher, the northstar goal is to build a safe and connected network within a quarter mile of everyone. this northstar goal is high level. >> it's aspirational and it gets us pointed in the same direction. >> and so for bikeways we're using data and applying national standards to determine the types of facility types that we're going to use that are suitable for all ages and abilities of the north american city transportation official or nac to guide for choosing a facility is a metric that considers vehicle volumes speeds number of motor vehicle lanes and operational condition considerations for our facility type. >> so for example on high volume high speed streets it suggests a protected bike lane on low traffic, low volume residential streets we may consider a bicycle boulevard. >> so the plan is it takes this sort of framework and any

project that would site this plan will still go through its own approval process. but this is just to sort of give you a lay of the land of how we are planning on approaching the northstar network. >> next slide. so to deliver a safe and connected network we're going to prioritize closing gaps in all ages and abilities by making upgrades in the existing network and while we've made great progress over the last decade including delivering 20 miles of separated bikeways in the last two years and became becoming one of the safest big city for cycling in 2023, we find that ridership really increases with every new quick build and there's still many gaps in today's all ages and abilities . >> this slide is our sort of outlines the factors that are considered for how and when bikeway projects are implemented they are improved improving safety, technical feasibility resources

and community readiness. in just a moment i'm going to hand it over to my colleagues to talk more about these but this is an existing process that we're just really delighting for you today and at the end of the presentation we really hope to have a good discussion around the decision making framework so that we have good alignment. and so with that i'm going to hand it over to about lasky, our bike project program manager to kick it off with technical feasibility. >> good afternoon. board of directors and new chair and matt lasky on the bike bicycle program manager within the livable streets subdivision and we are the planners and engineers at take for these these lines on a map and really turn them into improvements on the street and as we know there are a number of competing interests on our on our streets there's limited space that comment to

accommodate the various demands for all the uses and well may look straight forward on a slide here as you know have you seen our streets projects come before you? they're actually much more complicated than as listed so for implementation we consider engineering needs including traffic speeds, volume intersections as well as existing infrastructure like signals. additionally we we look at transit and because we want to make transit run faster or more efficient and more effectively as well as our bike facilities and so whether bike facilities are intersecting or parallel to transit routes, we we work with our with colleagues in transit to make sure that this can happen. for example rails on the street. you know those can be a

challenge for cyclists and so we want to accommodate facilities for them that way as well as overhead overhead wires and how how we accommodate trolley wires with cycling routes we we understand the needs also of our city's first responders. we work closely and collaboratively with the fire department on pretty much all of our projects. >> we consider the curb for all our planning design and implementation in the curb space which is for you know, passengers or commercial loading or folks that require mobility, better mobility access, blue zones next to our resources. so these are in addition to the technical feasibility considerations that we consider

commonly outside of our control are some of these resources like funding bicycle projects are relatively low in cost. we use all sorts of funding mostly grant funds and that's from local sources all the way to federal sources and those you know those can change depending on political factors staffing capacity. we have a number of planners and engineers that are most excellent working on these projects but there's ebb and flow in hiring and this is also true with our our shops are our crews that are striping or implementing signals. our meter changes those also have fluctuations so our efficiency and effectiveness in terms of when we are able to implement things really can can hinder on that also other city

departments and agencies. so an example is public works a lot of our design build contracts we work with public works a lot and that is from construction drawings all the way to you know contracts. and so if there's if there's changes in staffing there then that can affect our projects as well. >> lastly i was going to mention competing priorities and so we we can develop a framework on how we want to implement projects in this plan. however, there's always a number of competing priorities that we have to consider with our with our resources because we have you know whether it's a paving project or a new development project or a supervisors kind of project that that we need to consider that can kind of change the dynamic of what we're implementing when our pastor mike thank you matt maia small

in the planning directorate as of mta i'm going to talk a little bit about community readiness. i'm very happy to have a little bit of time to take take some time to get into this a little more detail. it's a term that we really elevated through this plan and as much as it would be handy to have community readiness as a metric as something that we could put a number to, it's pretty hard to do that with something that involves social evaluation judgment and working together. so one of the most useful parts of a of a planning process is to help us also develop a shared language. >> and so we're focusing on this what it means to us as in the planning process and of course how we're going to have a conversation about it today. >> so we're all using it in the same way. >> and then i just want to most importantly kind of elevate that the plan itself is establishing policy that will be followed once it's adopted. right? so some of this is going to give us guidance in the future so we can use this language and we can look back to that

policy and see if we're really meeting meeting it at those moments so future decisions must meet this policy if this plan is adopted. so there are four primary roles i want to talk about in community and the first actually is as have mta staff and as of mta itself as part of community and we bring project forward projects forward from the agency from leadership from public asks it's typically around safety concerns. >> the public itself of course has many layers of community to it and they provide feedback as to how projects will affect them. >> community can mean people on a block. it can mean advocacy groups, it can mean different kinds of neighborhood groups and stakeholders. so it's a very diverse environment of of public will that local leaders guide with their points of view. >> so leaders are often talking to their constituents but they also provide leadership which helps to align voices and then of course you all are the critical piece that works

towards decision making as you evaluate this process and staff recommendations. >> next slide please. so on community readiness working with community has always been at the core of our work. >> we are public servants. we tailor it at different parts of the process to clarify a decision making space so we don't always control the mta board doesn't always control how projects have to happen. there are a lot of different reasons why we would need to engage community in different ways so we want to just kind of recognize that we're we're tailoring that and it really runs from you know what it what it's saying here which is that we have a we can inform the public, we can consult with the public, involve collaborate and empower and this doesn't mean more engagement. it doesn't mean that we're just going to be adding more in. it means that we're going to be figuring it out when and how. next slide please. so how will this work in practice when is the community ready first? >> and it's important to remind everyone as christie mentioned

that the plan does not approve any projects each project on the north star map will come forward for engagement and approval. after this plan the north star will guide which projects come forward. so noting that we have very specific set of criteria of the things that we're looking at first and how things move through a process of resources and technical assessments as we start projects when projects start to come on from this index coming from our north star map we will be consulting with community through relationships that we have built and maintain. so it is important that we have a constant dialog with members of community before we have projects. that's something the agency is working on all the time and it's very important that we sustain those and continue to kind of own that trust. >> so this will help us evaluate in those early stages who key stakeholders are and what type of engagement is the right fit. so for example where we have

community action plans we will continue to use that empower side of the spectrum where we have indicated a study in the north star map so you've seen little dashed lines on our north star map for places where we know there's really complicated transportation issues or maybe a merchant corridor we will collaborate. those require really detailed conversations that have to do with loading and all the challenges within those environments when there is clear community leadership in favor of a project that maybe it's been very well known and it's really been been something that's been on people's radar we feel that overwhelming sense of it we might just do a further involvement. >> so our project choices will also be based on the policy in the plan as is listed here too. >> so we have two different sort of pockets to talk about of how we're going to be elevating through the policy. >> one is prioritizing network segments. this will be related to specific and more intense safety concerns gap closures, school access and local trips.

so we want to really make sure that those projects get elevated and when you're reviewing projects that they are meeting those metrics obviously things will go beyond that as well but that is something we're paying attention to. >> we also want to make sure we're elevating voices of caregivers, seniors those with disabilities merchants, people who live in car dependent neighborhoods and those who've been harmed by past government actions. so those are voices we are especially paying attention to and listening to recognizing vulnerabilities and history and making sure that we're providing that is really where equity starts to come to play. >> so these two plan directives give us the path to do our work so as we're making choices inside of a process at mta and you the tools to inform your decisions, it does not say that local voices overrule citywide goals. many of these are actually looking at how the overall network works as well as safety concerns, school access a lot of these things have to do with

citywide issues so it really talks about how these two groups fit together. >> so hopefully we will have prioritize the right projects and tailor the right form of engagements and approvals should be a clear yes it shouldn't make it that far if it's not at that point it might not be ready. >> for example projects and community action plans community based transportation plans and then we have other places neighborhoods we've worked in like in the dogpatch and jefferson street is another good example and fisherman's wharf where we have heard overwhelming support. >> the goal is to set projects up for success and to maintain trust but we also want to recognize that the city has tough tradeoffs. >> we have done a lot of the low hanging fruit. we have actually put a lot of our recent network near some of the densest parts of the city to provide as much access as we can. >> so the citywide network doesn't always match with local voices and these choices are going to continue to be challenging and of course that's why we have a public board and why are you weighing in on this plan right now is

really important so that things can follow the projects can follow the plan. thank you. and i think i'm handing it back to christy. >> thank you for your patience. so you just heard about safety technical feasibility our resources and community readiness. i'm just going to walk through a quick example of how we could apply that in on the screen in green we have a connection between the mission in excelsior that goes through glen park. this is a project elevated in the community action plan. we've done preliminary technical feasibility around it and we know that it's funded by prop l funds. >> so this this is a project that could rise to the top of priority. >> then i then we highlight two other projects that would close gaps but they're missing an element there's a connection in oh am i on brotherhood way where we've started preliminary discussions with the supervisor but we still feel like we need to engage community more

and then another project in the southeast on the mansell streetscape this is a project highlighted in the visit valley and portola community based transportation plan community priority but we were rejected on funding for it in 2023. >> so these are just examples of how we would apply this framework and we would look at the remainder of the northstar network and start working through that next slide. >> so as we will look towards future implementation, this is a two year work plan. so at every two years we'll check in on our resources, we'll check in on community and that'll help us decide what projects to prioritize and and again every project still needs to go through its own approval process and one benefit of this approach is that it allows us to follow up on our community action plans as well as have this northstar network be the floor and not the ceiling of our network as we maintain

and build relationships in the city. if a city if a community identifies an opportunity for improving a segment, we have the opportunity to do that. and so we've talked a lot about our network but we do have a lot of existing programs that add to the bike culture in san francisco that includes bike parking, bike share, traffic calming, school traffic calming quick builds capital and streetscape projects, slow streets and neighbor ways. we do design review and development implementation. we do spot improvements and education and encouragement programs one such existing program that we think could be have potential for really big impact is the school traffic calming program. >> our analysis found that 120 4k through 12 schools are outside of a quarter mile from an all ages and abilities facility. >> so by improving this program we can greatly greatly improve safety for like our most

targeted audience. that's students and families. so currently the program is funded for pedestrian improvements and so with additional risk resources we can scale this to include bikeway improvements. next slide and go ahead and click okay. and last time we were here in november you also shared interest in developing crosstown routes so while we've been largely focused on shorter trips we do see the benefit of having improved connectivity between neighborhoods as demonstrated by border and the connection needed between mission and excelsior. >> so we present some crosstown routes just to wrap this up this is just another snapshot of where we've been. this has been a two year process of outreach as well as analysis. we will be going to the board in february where we hope to adopt the plan you will be

adopting the community action plans our policies program aims and the network next slide. >> and so with that we're close it up to set you up for a discussion. we'd like your input on this decision making framework and we'd like you to know we'd like to know from you board what you need from us for final adoption in february. thank you very much, christy excellent presentation i before i. >> i would like to open this item up to public comment and then hear from the board but i just before we do that i want to just highlight a couple of things that i heard from the presentation. the first and most important part is that the biking and rolling plan does not change the current process for public notice public hearings

and approval by the board of individual projects and this this plan when we do approve a plan if we do approve a plan will not be approving any specific projects. >> it will be the approval of a framework for as we move forward and plan our our network transportation network into the future in this particular way. and i think that was really the most important thing to us to be very, very clear with with the public and i think we'll just move to a public comment now. >> thank you. >> i do have a speaker cards bob finebaum sara silver lucia bogota. pamela kimball it's 437 on a

tuesday. they are in san francisco. the rubber meets the road right now muni is the focus muni is the necessity in san francisco we must preserve muni service. we know that there is money that is required to preserve muni service. we do not have the time the space or the money for this kind of nonsense and this bike

and rolling plan must be stopped now we cannot proceed with it. >> i could see hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been spent in planning of this nonsense. >> stop it. we need to preserve muni service. that's what's moving people in san francisco bicycles are a small fraction of the transportation in san francisco. if you don't believe me, look at the figures that are compiled by the us census. >> they show how people move in cities and this plan is enormously expensive and at best should be deferred until muni comes back to pre-pandemic service. >> thank you.

>> thank you for your comment. next speaker please. yes it's a lovely idea to have this wonderful bicycle park of san francisco right where people can safely ride their bike. young people, healthy people, people who aren't transporting laundry or groceries or children. >> sure. but yeah muni as a priority from bus transportation. a lot of people depend on that. a lot more than bicyclists which my understanding is they are indeed a minority. it's a very very powerful coalition here. i don't know why i don't know how but anyway if it's true that you do consider the needs of first responders then you would not let the great highway be closed. you wouldn't close all these road access areas. you wouldn't do these bicycle

plans and all these other plans for the park that create bottlenecks and make it much slower, more difficult and require more gasoline, more fumes in the air now instead of i think i mentioned earlier instead of driving directly to the boathouse it's still i have to drive from the richmond district to the sunset district and then back in the park and circle stowe lake to get to the boathouse. that's more gas, more money for me, more fumes in the environment. i see when you said earlier this is how we're going to implement the plan like so much of muni items up for discussion it is signed, sealed and almost delivered. what we have to say is just a formality. i don't know if you listen you guys seem improv as i just heard people comment very articulate reasonable relevant

comments on something you just said you all just said okay consent we said we passed it an earlier item that you were talking about of you know i didn't follow that particular item but it was you're a dead end road. >> thank you man. i make no parking and thank you for your comment. >> thank you. next speaker please. okay. >> and if your next speaker if you are transparent ma'am it is very important that ma'am excuse me it is very important that everyone has the same amount of time for fairness sake thank you, ma'am. >> next speaker please. we expect you to do a little thinking about the consequences . >> good afternoon. i'm lucia boger. two years ago when i served on the neighborhood advisory committee for upper market street, the bicycle coalition opposed protected bikeways especially near the curbs because they made it hard for bicycles to escape potential

accidents. >> i was i want to caution you to avoid making structural changes which will either provoke the public be dangerous or become obsolete something you experienced on valencia as a neighborhood member of valencia. i know to my sorrow. >> instead keep the streets flexible so that can be used by all modes and respond to evolving uses. >> i was recently in china where the bicycle is now almost obsolete. i was there for three weeks. i saw exactly two bicycles. everybody is using electric scooters. three wheel drives provide commercial deliveries, eight passenger vans with open seats sort of like siri with the french provide local transit. i didn't see any predicted projected bikeways and though

they did have some separate paths for pedestrians of course finland has the definitive separation of bicycles cars but we can never pull that off. >> so instead of planning for universal bicycle use which doesn't help us ages allow for flexibility which will accommodate changing demand and voice and avoid costly reduce. and finally of course you all know about amsterdam but of course it's flat. unlike san francisco here we kind of have to use mountain bikes. >> so please consider the idea of more participation by the public. i just heard about this yesterday so i don't think your public outreach is going beyond the bicycle coalition. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker please. i read more speaker cards john winston fage of fisher marie herbal. good afternoon board members. i hope you'll actively listen

to my comment given how long we've all been here. i come here today to speak not just for myself but for thousands and thousands of san franciscans that cannot attend board meetings due to work constraints or the need to care for the very young or elderly or disabled. i'm sure you know that my voice is their voice too. so in recent years because of radical road closures and the rerouting and squeezing of traffic as have taxpayers who drive their own vehicles and those that ride muni have developed a lot of trust and esteem for us if mta muni continues to need massive improvement to bring the ridership to its top potential and the budget deficit needs to be brought under control as we heard earlier today. >> so these two issues need to be the only priorities for the board to resolve at this point in time including in february. the bike and rail plan is the product of a small, dogmatic and relatively lee group that's decided they know what is best for all san francisco. >> however, majority san franciscans either choose not

to or cannot ride bicycles or scooters for reasons of distance and timing disability the need to haul heavier cumbersome goods family needs, night time transportation or even inclement weather. already the road changes and closures that have happened have resulted in a sharp drop in revenue for small businesses. for example, valencia corridor in the high street area and small business will be heavily impacted by more changes such as barriers between the curb and cars. so the bike and road plan does not consider any downsides given there is no cost benefit analysis in the plan. it's a plan is full of impractical proposals kind of chaotic and they do not consider any downsides or negative impacts upon san francisco. the negative side there's always that angle. it's pretty devices very contentious. and lastly, i think it's time that bicycles and scooters pay for both licensing and parking of their equipment and get

ticketed for infractions to be equitable. >> thank you for your comment. next speaker please. >> hello. >> your job as a board is to set priorities and that means making decisions. implementation of the bike and roll plan would be a criminal misuse of city funds. you're facing a massive deficit as you were discussing earlier. if you truly want less private vehicles on our streets then you'd focus on the reliability and the safety of muni services. implementation of the plan would continue at a boom times assault on street parking and add more traffic restrictions. this would further increase the cost of living and reduce quality of life by making movement of people and delivery of delivery of goods and services more difficult. the people of san francisco do not want this. you know this because of the significant attention to community readiness. normal people do not use this term. so let me translate it into

english. you know people do not want more severe restrictions on street parking in the flow of traffic. you're intending to bypass this by amending the process to approve implementation. it states in your plan that you're trying to do that as well as spending more of our taxpayer money on programs to attempt to make the plan more palatable to the residents who you know are going to object. >> in short, this plan represents everything that is driving people out of the city and making life more challenging expensive for those of us who remain. the plan would continue your decades long tradition of squandering our hard earned taxpayer money on projects are more focus on virtue signaling than actually improving our economy and quality of life. mind you i took time off from work to come here today. >> i am actually a cyclist. i'm a motorist. i'm a pedestrian and a frequent user. public transit took muni here today. i was a bicycle commuter for many years until i was 40. i did not use a car to go to work so i am not someone who's saying no no bikes.

it's all about balance. >> the biking in rolling plan must be stopped. focus on what your priorities are moving people around the city. focus on what people need to do and that is your getting your money in order. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker please. >> hi. my name's mina young and here's a note from the community online. >> it's become increasingly and increasingly difficult over the last ten years for families, elderly people with disabilities, etc. who rely on their high weight vehicles to get through the city. while i understand a future vision for a city center with no private vehicles looks good, the short term impacts on neighborhoods with dense populations of working families like those sunset and the retirement is something the

bicycle coalition selfishly does not understand. >> families are leaving the city not only because of crime and homelessness. they are leaving because project like this are sending a clear message. if you can't take your kids to two different schools at two different times in the morning in a cargo bike or bus and get to work on time then this city is not for you. small neighborhood business sites like that are hurting because it's too hard to visit some cisco and hard to attract young workers. >> a young a strong urban community has families at the core with young people growing up in the city working and starting their own businesses and families. >> if the city cannot support all generations of families with a balanced plan for transport needs here then the

city of the future will literally be inhabited by who they are supporting the most retire cyclists, robots and docks. >> thank you for your comment. next speaker please. a few more speaker cards. leslie denise o'sullivan. kathleen g. hi again native san franciscan here. >> i run, walk, bike and drive but i find myself increasingly having to fight for vehicles to be able to remain in san francisco. that is necessary in a functional city. >> we need them for deliveries . we need them for all kinds of things to get elderly people around kids to school people to work. we will not have a functional city if we don't have roads. >> bike and roll is a trojan horse to sneak in a massive

and expensive street redesign without proper oversight and meaningful engagement of the community. >> everything is. these are just big concepts. well you know what that's code for. we don't have to really give you any details and then we're just going to slide it in at the end. >> are you listening to your own meeting as if mta is barely treading water was a direct quote in this meeting. you've got loom looming major asset and infrastructure maintenance costs in the near future. you need to get back to basics . bike and roll is a pet project for 2 to 3% of the population. >> your own statistics on your own website say the biking population has really not changed at all over the last 15 years. >> it's remained pretty constant at 2 to 3% goes up and down. >> you need to you need to put this on hold at the very least until muni stabilizes.

that is your core mission that is critical. >> how can we be talking about expensive and ineffective street redesign when you can't keep the muni lights on? this is not covered induced either so i'm so tired of hearing about that as if mta was operating a significant deficit starting at least in 2014 to 2019 before covid covid made it worse. >> fine. but let's stop using that as an excuse. this has been mismanaged for years and it's this board's job to dig in and figure it out and fix muni and get yourselves back on fiscal responsible track. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker please. >> the list could literally go on and on about why this should be halted immediately sparking a rolling plan. starting from the economic standpoint and point of view, the reduction in parking availability directly impacts

retail businesses. >> the proposed changes disproportionately affect service based businesses. clients require door to door access. >> moving on from the economic impacts but environmental considerations traffic congestion effects reduces road capacity often leads to increase congestion on parallel streets. additional time spent searching for parking stop and traffic from new road configure ations can increase per vehicle emissions can limit access to emergency vehicles. the list goes on. like marie said, this is a 2 to 3% pet project from san franciscans to 2 to 3% of san franciscans not the majority of san franciscans who live and potentially have lived here their whole lives. >> lastly, the stake doesn't really positively impact the 2,030%. i'm not exactly sure the percentage of population i've heard 20 to 30% of senior citizens in san francisco

especially on the west side. i advise you the board again to think about the basics. >> getting muni restored in order and making it safe and then getting busses to and from where they're supposed to go on time. thank you. next speaker please. >> hello again. >> i'm a senior citizen and i went to a two day physical therapy. >> i could not ride a bike there. it was hard enough taking a bus certain places so biking definitely was inadequate. i would urge you to please emphasize getting muni back on track to to services where they were not decorative signage, not biking and rolling not mosaics on the street but just get money back to where it was. >> thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please.

>> hello, my name is denise o'sullivan and i just want to live you guys i just want i want to ride my bike and i don't want to die on riding my bike and that's my goal every day. i'm not religious but every day i have to do the cross just for good luck. >> and you talk to that you listen to these people and you think that we're doing something horrible. we're riding bikes. it's going to help the it's going to help the environment. >> it helps our health. i lost 30 pounds riding my bike. i have arthritis. i'm an older person. >> i live on lake street and everyone like a big chunk of people on lake street riding on lake street are older people. >> it's not just a young person's game and i struggle and i do it as well but somehow i'm able to ride my bike and i'm grateful for that. but we need more improvements

especially corridors to go into different neighborhoods. >> so i rarely go for example south of market because i'm petrified that i might get hit by a car. >> i'm a mother. i work i mean i'm taking my afternoon off as well to be here and i'm urging you to please make it safe. >> if it weren't for the slow lake program and slow street program i wouldn't have even gotten on a bike. so my. all i'm saying is that if you build the infrastructure more and more people will take the risk. >> people are frightened about biking. they want to but they're frightened. and i do want to say that 80% of s.f. residents want to use bikes or other mobility devices . >> it's not true that we we want to. we want to drive. >> i hate driving sometimes i'm forced to drive because i feel like it's not safe. so please, please. in addition to these corridors

north-south east-west. i as a mom and as just wanting safety it is really important that we have school zones that are safe. >> safe. thank you for your comment. thank you. and by the way, i do use public transport i don't think. >> next speaker please. thank you. thank you. hello i'm comcast. i live in district six close to venus station. >> my wife and i both use our bikes to commute most of the time she commute to the east bay as she bikes to the ferry building takes a ferry. i work in san jose. i take my bike to a cultural station, take the train. so even like there are people there many people like me i see them on caltrain, i see them on the bike lanes that are commuting to work. >> it's not just people like doing this for a hobby. >> um i should also mention of adhd off and struggling with kind of like concentration a lot so for me it's like really

hard to drive like two hours with all the hours to like work without like endangering myself and injuring others. >> so like taking the train taking my bike is like the safest thing to do. >> but that being said, it's still pretty dangerous too. my goodness if i had multiple dangerous incidents i had like a hit and run. i wasn't hurt but like somebody to kind of almost hit me and not like be touched but like they just like left and had many incidents where i felt really unsafe and i'm not the only person i remember like an interview with daniel new mayor saying that he wanted to bike more places with his kid but it was just too dangerous. they didn't do it right. so both like the previous me and the current mayor clearly are supporting building better bike infrastructure. right. and most people voted for these two people. so there's a pretty strong mandate for better bike infrastructure and as of like independent of what the comments here are saying so

yeah, just as somebody previously said i just don't want to die and i want to be able to open my future kid hopefully and as a next thank you for your comment next speaker please. >> again good afternoon. my name's brandon powell. i live in district nine here in san francisco. it's ironic to me that the people take it as given that ridership on muni has been affected by a perception of a lack of safety yet they don't seem to be able to make the logical connection to a huge perception of a lack of safety for people who would choose something other than a car to get around the city an extensive network of protected bike lanes is essential to give people the opportunity to choose something other than a car. >> i'd like to note that people are not sitting in traffic behind bicycles. >> they're sitting in traffic behind cars because they are the traffic.

the city has a responsibility to all of its citizens to protect us to make the the public way safe for everyone who chooses to use it regardless of the mode that they choose to use it. there should be a core that this entity should commit to of protected bike lanes from which we can build to accomplish vision zero an often referenced but not really enforced vision of people not dying on the streets of san francisco. i'm an avid cyclist. i'm also a motorist. i race cars. i have nothing against cars as a thing. however cars need to be in their place and people shouldn't be forced to use them if we're concerned about equity we shouldn't require the purchase of a multi-thousand dollar vehicle as a condition of being able to find a job and get around the city. >> so be bold, take chances, protect the citizens of the city of san francisco who choose something other than a

car to get around and yes muni is awesome. do what you can to save it. >> thank you for your comment. next speaker please go on. good afternoon commissioners. thank you. >> the biker war plan to reduce private vehicle trips to 20% by 2030 unfairly hurts young people, middle aged people and seniors. i speak for the many, many people that can't be here tonight. this afternoon because they are working and we are unlike many of the people that are here today that are being paid to speak. >> please take that into consideration when you make your decisions. i've lived in san francisco for over 30 years. i take public transportation as much as possible or i walk. i used to bicycle all over the place outside of san francisco.

so i'm glad san francisco is making biking safer. i do have a car because it's unpractical to take many many trips on public transportation . >> i don't bike anymore because i don't have the physical capability or confidence and number one the priority should be on making mass transportation safer and cleaner. many of my friends will not even take public transportation because they feel unsafe and uncomfortable to the dirty conditions at night in particular the crime in our streets. the crime in our subways and the crime in our in the vehicles make this transit option unavailable. >> it wasn't like this 20 years ago. now it is. in addition, what if i'm carrying heavy items whether what do i. >> what if i'm carrying a baby ? as a result, we need our cars, right? services are too expensive to

use on a regular basis. >> the bike and roll plan hurts unfairly young and seniors. and the reduction of parking and street closures threatens to cut us off on our ability to do regular everyday activities. it will drive people out of san francisco and deter people especially families. >> ma'am, i'm sorry your time has expired. okay. >> thank you. thank you. director chen. how? i'll improve. thank you, ma'am. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. tom or dulwich? yeah. know i guess haters are going to hate but the yeah this well cyclists are a minority so we can deny them their rights. feels very un san franciscan to me so i mean i know it's kind of the national mood but it's grossing me out. yeah so did want to talk about the biking and rolling plan your northstar goal is too weak

as it is. it's not the star. the north goal should be every street in san francisco should be a safe place and a comfortable place to bicycle. what we're asking for is parity with other modes of transportation. now if you were doing a driving plan and you said yeah, our vision for driving driving access universally is everyone no one should be more than a quarter mile from a paved road . you'd say well that's too weak, right? like you know people who drive in park they want to drive and park wherever they want to go, right? they want to go from point to point. i think same thing with walking. it's like if you said okay, our great vision for the walkable city is no one should be more than a quarter mile from a street but sidewalks then you would say well that's inadequate. people need to be able to walk from door to door. well cyclists need the same thing everybody else needs we need parity with the other modes. >> so yeah, we know that that's not the infrastructure we have, right? it's designed by long dead traffic engineers. it was optimized for driving and parking and it's going to be a long haul to get there. so i would say treat your

network this network that you've devised here as the part of your strategy. right? like let's do all of that within five years, create a connected network within five years you also need a routine accommodation every time you're doing something on a street well that needs to be a multimodal street needs to accommodate walking, cycling, transit and cars and traffic parking so i would say that muni forward's been doing a good job with this. i've talked to julie about this. when you redesign the streets they are always multimodal designs, right? >> yes it's transit priority but there's walking improvements they're cycling improvements so you can do this you can be have routine accommodation, have complete streets and all your policies and implement this network. you just have to commit to it and treat bicyclists the way you treat all the other modes. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker please stephen solomon first i want to thank

the s.f. mta staff for all the work they've done on preparing this plan and for going over and above on the outreach to the community for feedback and improvements to the plan. >> i want to comment on the i would like to see the addition of 17th street to the bike enroll plan. 17th street is a major east west bike corridor for commuting for bicycle commuting across the city and there needs to be an extension of some protections for bicyclists from bryant street to castro in the plan. >> and i know that there are some issues with an equity priority zone in the middle of that i believe and it's very important that the people in that community are heard that the amenities and benefits that people in that community want and need which go well beyond transportation to be addressed

at the same time that the needs of probably 95 plus percent of the stakeholder owners that is those people who commute by bike through that corridor need to be taken into consideration and the safety of those people need to be taken into consideration. i think there's a craving in san francisco for for common sense and for getting things done clearly san francisco bike current bikers are voting with their pedals when you look at i would say 17th street has one of the heaviest bike traffic in the city maybe in the top five street sections in the city and it makes common sense that that's where people need more safety and protection and for the 50% or so of san franciscans who would like to ride but don't feel safe enough yet that's also very important

. so common sense build it where it's most needed and i thank you for your consideration of creating a protected network which is so important and that gaps in a network don't make a network. >> thank you for your comment. next speaker please. >> hi. good afternoon directors. congratulations to your child life. zach lipton i'm here to ask for a bold biking and rolling plan that lives up to the vision and the northstar goal. first i want to thank christy rosario and the whole team who have endured a lot of abuse through this process that really no one should have to endure in the workplace. >> there's a perception in this room that the biking and rolling plan only serves a small few but just read it 29% of adult residents use active transportation right now to get around the city at least weekly. >> that's hundreds of san francisco hundreds of thousands of san franciscans who are already riding and our safety

is your responsibility as policymakers. safe infrastructure is a basic service this agency needs to provide. >> that's 29% of residents using active transportation at least weekly yet 99% of all streets in san francisco prioritize car traffic over all other modes that's not balanced and it's not safe. nobody's banning cars in this plan but is 99% not enough for some people? >> there's a lot of talk that this plan is the floor and not the ceiling but the floor for this plan must be for all ages and abilities. northstar goal that you previously approved and this map unfortunately doesn't live up to that. >> it shows almost no new protected lanes and leaves major gaps and entire areas of the city left out. >> this map says that families are going to bike to school on the treacherous unprotected lanes on century the public bike lanes remain unfinished which former chair brinkman called her biggest regret of her time on the board. >> cesar chavez remains a death trap. >> i could go on. fortunately this is easy to fix

as the board directs staff to restore the missing connections from previous drafts and define all ages and abilities with strict criteria for protection, vehicle volumes and 85th percentile speeds or so create safe infrastructure zones around every school in the city so that we have safe streets for pleasure. >> thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. hi. thank you for all the work you've been doing on this plan . i really appreciate it. i know how much hard work it is so i just want to say i don't write as much as i want to on my bike because i don't feel safe and i ride my bike to the grocery store so i use mine as utility one before i actually lived in the city my first time driving into the city i was delivering tomatoes to by right and so i had the experience of trying to park and make deliveries so i am very aware of how things can be difficult

when you're trying to do commercial activity on the streets here. >> but i live here now. >> i sold my car and i use muni to get everywhere i walk to work every day and i personally would ride my bike more if there was more secure parking. >> part of the reason that i don't go and use my bike in more places especially longer trips is i don't want to go somewhere and then walk out on my bike is stolen or pieces of it or stolen. so if there is a way to make more secure parking that would definitely help utilize what's already existing. i also really encourage you that when you do build out the network that what you build is actually safe because i live in soma and when i ride those bike lanes like i almost get hit all the time when i'm trying to go into those right turn slip lanes those things are not safe and i wouldn't want a child to ride with me on those kinds of things and i'm a four year old adult. >> i was hit by a car where i used to live. i still have like neck pain from it and it's very unpleasant and so i don't want

that to happen to anyone else or something worse. so thank you for all your time . thank you for all your work and please support the most ambitious plan that you can. i appreciate you and your work . >> thank you very much. thank you. next speaker please. >> hello director is my name is rachel clyde and i'm the west side community organizer for the san francisco bicycle coalition. >> for someone to think passed on to your staff for all their hard work on this project, the biking and rolling plan is meant to chart the city's course for the next 20 years but it does not go far enough to meet the needs of the next two decades. >> it does not mention how we are anticipating 82,000 new housing units to be built within the next decade. for the sake of all those residents and all all residents including those who must drive those new residents will need other transportation options because we simply don't have space in our 49 square mile city for 82,000 new cars.

the majority of residents in san francisco want these changes. >> 80% of s.f. residents want to bike or roll on a regular basis. today we already see roughly 80,000 people use a bike scooter or other device daily. that percentage of people riding will increase. we must plan for the city that we want and need in 20 years requiring urgent and ambitious action every time that i make public public comment here i feel the need to repeat repeat that we are in a climate crisis. >> leading climate scientists around the world agree that the actions and inactions that we take in the next couple of years will determine the magnitude of climate disasters that we will experience. >> and i think i can say with confidence that i'm the youngest person in this room and those are climate disasters that my generation is going to have to experience and future generations. >> so every day and every action matters we don't have time for a weak or ineffective biking and rolling plan. we have to do it right and we have to do it right the first time. we need to see in the first

five years slow school zones around all elementary schools and a base grid of convenient safe crosstown routes that meet and actors all ages and all abilities guidelines. >> so please give the mta staff direction and support that they need to make the biking and rolling plan ambitious in the ways that we need in order to fight for a livable, sustainable future for my generation for younger generations and for future generations. >> thank you for thank you for your comment. next speaker please. >> good afternoon directors. my name is clara mobley. i'm the director of advocacy at the san francisco bicycle coalition. the biking and rolling plan is meant to consider what our transportation landscape will be in 20 years. i want to thank christy ben, maya and of mta staff for your hard work on this plan so far. it's really daunting to think about where we are going to be two decades from now but there are a few things that we know to be true if the city follows through on its commitment to

the visions expressed today in the community action plans it will certainly be a more just and equitable city. we know that the city must build 82,000 housing units in the first half of that time period. all of the new residents living in those units also need to get around the city if they don't have a variety of real transportation choices they will turn to cars to get around . and this would be a disaster for everyone in s.f. especially the people who must rely on driving. like many seniors, people with disabilities and low income workers. if you are worried that safer bike infrastructure will make your commute less convenient, imagine what 82,000 additional cars on the road would do. >> i also hope and expect that the city's economy will be revitalized with a bustling downtown complemented by thriving commercial districts around the city. this is certainly part of mayor larry's vision to fully incorporate biking and rolling into the lifeblood of the city serves these economic outcomes . it more efficiently uses our street and curb space and costs

next to nothing to maintain over the next 20 years goods will increasingly move around the city by e-bikes and cargo bikes and they'll do it efficiently and cleanly and with less disruption. finally, we know that in 20 years the planet will be a lot hotter. it is an ethical, economic and self preserving imperative that we do everything we can to minimize those impacts. there are a lot of challenges and opportunities in the next 20 years. >> currently this plan does not meet to raise that does not rise to meet them. >> so please direct staff to make a plan that gets us ready for that future. >> thank you for your comment. >> next speaker please. >> hello new chair and board members. my name is eric roselle and i'm a long term resident of the tenderloin. and director of safe programs at the tenderloin community benefit district. i also had the good fortune to work on the tenderloins biking and rolling plan and speak with thousands of residents and community members throughout the outreach

process. first and foremost i want to thank the asp mta and the brp team for your leadership in this process and bringing the bike in and road plan to life. it's inspiring to see the investment we've seen so far and a more sustainable safe and accessible biking and rolling future for our communities and city. i like to remind you though these plans will not only make biking and rolling safer and more inclusive for all ages and abilities but also contribute to healthier neighborhoods, improve quality of life for all of us. your ongoing commitment to prioritizing this initiative by adopting the plan in february and improving funding of our plan recommendations will be key to rectifying past harms and making our communities safer. i hope it will continue to be a model for equitable transportation planning. thank you again for your dedication and and hard work on this. >> thank you for your comment.

next speaker please. >> hello board members. my name is parker de. i'm transportation committee chair for lower polk neighbors. we strongly support a citywide bike and rolling plan with no gaps. even more ambitious than the current northstar network concept. our requests for an ambitious plan really i think mirrors that of what the san francisco bike coalition recommends. laura polk neighbors is the bike and rolling plan as essential because it connects neighborhoods and recognizes past harms in san francisco's transportation planning. we live in a neighborhood deeply impacted by transportation choices that are designed for the benefit of other neighborhoods. the result for us is that every four days someone in our small neighborhood is injured in a traffic collision every four days almost every street and intersection in our neighborhood is on the high injury network. this is despite the fact that

73% of our neighborhood residents walk bike or take transit as their primary form of transportation according to the census. having a connected, safe, comfortable bike network is to the benefit of all road users. our main concern is that the plan doesn't act with enough urgency or have set timelines considering that every four days someone is being injured by a car in our neighborhood. slow implementation has tangible consequences. >> another important part of the plan is that is of particular interest to us is connecting schools to the city and slowing speeds in school zones. the lower polk neighborhood has numerous schools within it. it's essential that this adopted plan quickly implements a safe network for students and staff to get to and from these schools no matter where they live. again, we would like to see time bound goals to connect these schools and residents and students throughout the city. so thank you to mta staff and the community partners for their work on this plan. our neighborhood is ready for

an ambitious plan and we look forward to partnering with sfm two to help get there. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. next speaker please. >> >> good evening board of directors and congrats chair tarlov. my name is chris coveris. i'm the director of communications for the san francisco bicycle coalition. first we want to thank the five organizations who worked so deeply to gather community feedback and distill it into his powerful community action plans. they speak to how the harms inflicted by racist planning persist and must be addressed alongside increasing safety for those affected communities. the last time we were here discussing this plan it did not provide timelines for these goals other than a vague idea that the northstar network would be created within 20 years. maybe the lack of timelines and goals strips the plan of accountability and saps it of urgency that can focus the will of the agency and of city leaders. >> the goals and timelines are still missing as this hearing approached.

we've heard again that staff want direction from this board clear direction that provides a mandate. we asked you then and are asking you again direct staff to establish scope slo school zones around all elementary schools and create a base grid of convenient crosstown routes both within the plan's first five years. these strategic goals would improve connectivity across the city while targeting neighborhood improvements to serve local children and families like mine who live there. staff heard our demands and have alluded to them in this presentation but the goals that we asked for are not incorporated into the plan and certainly don't have timelines. >> the current school traffic calming program audits just ten schools a year. >> it would take over 13 years just to assess sfd city schools to say nothing of private and parochial schools. the grit that they show in their presentation may eventually be all ages and abilities by 2045 the city can't wait that long. we can't wait that long. we need leaders and champions to give staff the permission

and the imperative to do their jobs fully. >> that leadership can't end with this board but it will start with you. >> thank you. thank you for your comment. >> next speaker please. >> oh hi. >> my name is christopher. guess i cycle daily to meet my daily needs in san francisco. i used to get groceries. i see my friends. i use it to go to muni where i pay fare and take the bus. i would encourage the board to consider the perspectives of youths and young adults and to as much as possible try to hear them from youths and young adults. >> as a child and teen i wanted to bike to school. >> my parents wanted me to bike to school but there weren't safe options. thankfully transit was there but i lost about 40 minutes of my day that could have been cut down by biking. the only other feasible option was having my parents drive me and they didn't like that they liked having their time for spending quality time with me or going to work or other things. >> excuse me one second.

there are often complaints that cycling is just for a minority of young able bodied san franciscans and i started cycling as a young able bodied man but it started because of financial necessity and practicality because for many trips it was the best, fastest and cheapest way to get around like me get groceries, run errands and get to work. >> but i see daily that i'm not the only demographic that uses bikes to meet their daily transportation needs. and i also know that there's many many san franciscans that aren't like me that didn't or don't have that same appetite for risk that want to start biking. on a recent bike ride home from north beach. i had about four near-misses with cars. they were near misses. didn't happen but they didn't happen because i've been biking for about ten decades. >> if i was in that situation biking for the first or second year or if i were if i were in a different physical situation and my response time was slower, they would have been accidents, i would have gotten hit, i would have been injured. notably i've been biking san francisco for a long time. i've had those situations

happened in the gaps in the network not not ever as perfect but where there is strong all ages facilities. >> i don't feel that i need to be young and able bodied to ride my bike and to get to where i need to go. >> so basically i want to say listen to the youths and remember that all ages abilities it's not just a mantra it it's important and building all ages and abilities facilities. >> so i'm sorry your time is concluded. thank you again. so i get so wrapped up in listening to what people have to say. okay. >> are there any other commenters in the room? are there any accommodation requests? we do have one accommodation request. speaker you've been unmuted. mr. weiner. now i'm very concerned about this fiscal deficit and you're proposing that outlays of bike lanes.

now it's high time the bicyclist did something to resolve this proclaimed fiscal crisis. they should pay for parking fees, licenses and no funds should be given to this or any funding the bicycle coalition. given this presents fiscal crisis these are selfish demands that are completely out of line. so if they want something get it from silicon valley and some of their friends not from mta. >> thank you. thank you. >> no other callers. okay. thank you. with that we will close public comment. >> directors, colleagues we are being asked by staff to provide them with feedback and direction and the plan is

to bring us in february a a completed plan for adoption. and so this opportunity is very important for us to take to to digest some of the public feedback we've heard to call upon the reading that we've done, the meetings that we've been able to attend throughout the city and with mta staff in order to provide them with clear direction that will make this plan the best it can be that i've heard in the in the public comment a lot about a need for balance and and that's from people who are advocating for you know ease of driving as well as people who are advocating for other uses of the roadway and also i've heard

a lot of desire for systems that work that work and are understandable and don't create confusion. so this is really an important opportunity and i'd like to start with director hensley. please. >> oh great. thank you, madam chair and make it itself and all the community members who are here to present on their roadways. i do have one clarifying question and then some comments if i have you mentioned at our february meeting that in the resolution there will be more specific i know i know that and i want to be clear for people that we're not approving any like tactics today or event

or so i just want to be sure that if you could allow give us more of an idea of what that that resolution that we we beauregard as it relates to the be our piece there as it relates to the committee action plans my apologies what will those sort of look like? give us a sense of that. >> so as our community partners presented the community action plans are very comprehensive of daily life. they also include things that are outside of the scope of the biking and rolling plan. >> so in february you'll be approving the pieces that are within the scope of the bike and rolling plan. so that's biking and rolling recommendations. things outside of it including improving transit that falls

outside of the scope of the biking and rolling plan. >> so if for example there was a bike like we'd be approving a bigger bike or like a slow street so where is that is that the idea like the idea of it we've got the specific the idea of it, the content of it, right? >> so this is a recommendation coming from the community you're not approving a slow street project. you are approving the community by putting this forward as a recommendation. >> okay. yeah. okay. okay. and just to be clear again with everyone that has no funding tied to it so we're just approving the recommendation as as they are. yeah. so very good for that.

i think a couple very good. i think that a lot of a approval plan out there the this plan it's just for her for bike liaison and but i think that is for subcommittees i think there is more to it than the bike lanes i i know that in the 10 to 1 plan for example there are other other programs and other policy recommendations that are unrelated to bike lane but just more act more being and also like more things that are tangibly related to a safe manner and so there is a lot that there is a lot of covered in in in in the plan that's not

just about bike lanes and and just enhancing residents and citizens view of being safe . it's really a lot more than than just the bike lanes and i do all the support and trying to find a balance between competing needs and that what this process was meant to do particularly in those neighborhoods that were under that had been historically underserved and i do acknowledge that i think that for a neighborhood kids are looking at community it i do knowledge that i think some neighborhoods are more ready for these kind of projects than others. we just we just talked about

already the 10 to 1 you know doing capital projects earlier so clearly, you know their readiness for some of this work require that with other neighborhoods in the city and also i do know that there are other sort of work going on with recently and so yeah, just reading really receptive to people's readiness for this type of work but also realizing and i think i've said this before this week like we're not approving projects here and so this is a 20 year horizon if people are vetted i think that with we have to go into this with what i've wide open knowing that we're going to

have certain accountability points and also that a lot of this plan is unfunded. but i think we need just we got to start somewhere and so yeah, i, i think right now madam chair that's it. >> thank you director henslee director henderson thank you chair. i, um you asked for feedback so i think i'll just give mine. um, i understand that we're presented you know, in this sort of time period we're presented with a lot of difficult decisions that that force us to talk about the tradeoffs and the what ifs. what if we do something or not but or and i think that we also have to really center

and reflect on what was discussed which is that, you know, this is being rolled out in in a way where it's activating communities that have been intentionally left out or through certain actions harmed by the the work of the city. and i think that, you know, it is hard to say um i think it's really hard to say or to to to find that balance but that's what we're here for and what i don't want to do is say not right now. not right now, right now. you know for another 50 years or whatever it's been since some of these, you know, infrastructure changes were implemented and so my thoughts are as we're thinking about the tradeoffs, i think that we should also find a way to take

into consideration the the amount of time that people have had to have not had these types of amenities in their communities and what it what it means in terms of connections, whether it's to transit or to frankly to to be able to access part of the city and for me what's important is you know, i understand we have to weigh we have a we have a crisis in front of us and i know that you know, that doesn't um that doesn't help. but i think that we can't use that as a reason for why we don't do why we don't correct the the actions of the past and why we don't take figure out how to prioritize that. i also you know i see that it took a couple of years from january 2023 to go through this planning process and so it

seems to me that it's been a very methodical, you know, and intentional communication with different groups. and so i appreciate that and i understand that we might have to have some intentional process when it comes to actually rolling up a plan and implementing it you know, making sure that we identify the the different sources of funding to be able to pay for some of these infrastructure um changes or improvements. but i just i, you know i think it's it's too hard to say well not today and you know because i think it really will if we don't deal with the thing that is in front of us today that has been in front of us for decades and sort of pooh poohed away because it's not the right time then it'll be another 50 years and i just don't want to take that risk and i think that

i think that if we are it would be helpful as part of the action in february if you provide some timeline for the implementation rollout and you know what is what communities are ready or more ready and what areas and you know i get that not having the the funding or having the funding constraints that we are under will stall that but that's why i think it's so important for us to identify what those priorities are now so that we don't have to revisit this part of the process but we can instead then focus the energy on identifying the sources. and lastly, you know i'm a driver. i drive every day. i you know, i think that what's important to me is that we are doing our best to create it. >> um to create livable or you

know, enjoyable communities and where people can use all different kinds of modes of transportation but one that is you know centered around the the experience of the actual residents that live in these communities and decide, you know, what are we trying to connect people to? is it to their town center? is it to downtown san francisco? and i think that this plan is sort of starting us to start starting us in the direction to figure figuring that out and really does have the potential to create some with this public feedback and with the sort of engagement of the of the community members does have the the ability to help us create that sense of neighborhood that is is that now that you know maybe maybe many people i think with the ridership the routes maybe focused on downtown but we've heard so much about what the

neighborhoods are actually doing and so i think that this plan really does have the potential to capitalize on that. the change in the shifts in where people want to be and make those neighborhoods in those communities active and vibrant and have people on the street that feel safe and whatever mode of transportation they're in i don't want to be in my car and feel like i'm putting a bicyclist or somebody that's on their little scooter in danger . and so i think that this while i don't know that i would use it as a cyclists because i know how to ride a bike, i think that it is something that also does help to protect me as the as a driver. >> and so i just i really do want to help um, i hope that you can help communicate that to to different groups but what what would be helpful to me in february is if you outline a

little bit the priorities or the just the the timeline of this 20 year horizon or whatever it was that was cited in terms of implementation. thank you director director henderson director hemminger thank you, madam chair. i have to confess i'm still having a difficult time drawing a bead on what this plan is and what it is not. so maybe i could just ask you some pretty simple questions. >> is this plan budget constrained? in other words, are whatever number of projects are in the plan or ideas for improvement are in the plan? do you have a reasonable expectation that you've got the money for that or do you acknowledge that you don't? >> this is a plan.

there's no projects in the plan so it's we don't have it's not funded. >> okay. >> on the subject of connectivity, does this close all the gaps in the network? it didn't it does not it aims to right. there's still some segments there that we need to figure out. one big puzzle we have is getting over the west side of twin peaks that there's geographically really hard for us to figure out. so we name that in the plan we have an annotated north star map where we point to segments like that and we say we don't know. >> we need to figure that out. sorry to just pause one moment. i think director kirschbaum has a little bit more to say about the funding. >> yeah, i just question you just want to make a distinction between not having every dollar today to deliver the plan and the plan being grounded in

our empirical experience over the last several years on on what we can deliver. so it is there will be parts of the plan and you saw an example in the presentation like men's cell where we will continue to go back for discretionary money and continue to go back for discretionary money and may not be able to implement as quickly as possible. but the plan is not it's not so unbounded that we feel it is unachievable. okay. but is that to agree with that framework and i keep going here it's pretty late and you guys talked a lot to us so i think it's only fair i'm wondering about the role of safety. do you use any kind of measure

like the the high injury network to give advantage to projects and policies that advance that objective? yes. okay. that's a good short answer and i've heard several times that the project the plan doesn't have projects in it. >> correct. so anybody who wants to build a bike lane would have to go out and go through what's required or some version thereof before they can proceed. >> right. so we offer a network that's all made up of segments. we'll look at opportunities to make them into projects, right? >> this could be for example seventh someone mentioned 17th street earlier is that 17th street between valencia and potrero that could possibly be a project. the idea is that it would take a an initial analysis to identify what the project is

and then it would go through its own process. >> but you wouldn't i mean i guess the term of art i'm familiar with is tearing that you wouldn't be able to tear the approval of this plan that individual projects that are consistent with it can move ahead. i'm sorry. yeah i just if you're comfortable. >> yeah. so right you're talking specifically about square. yeah so there's no there's no i didn't want to use the word but yeah there's no programmatic coverage because this is actually exempt under sb 922 so each project would come forward as a separate secure 922 was what 922 is one that it actually is state legislation that exempted projects including active transportation plans. >> oh that was the center of this litigation, right. i believe there's also an extension that's being proposed in the state legislature for

for continuing that. >> but it has since i got you at the my miami as i've saved the hardest question for last i again given those answers that i received what is the value added by this plan? >> a plan will do a couple of things. one is there are specific actions in the plan and those actions are wide ranging. so we have five different goals and the actions within those goals sometimes are specifically things around our program programs are educational programs that we already have bicycle parking it talks to a lot of the programs . we don't just go out and build bikeways. we do a lot of things to resource in lower barriers for people to use bikes and scooters and all kinds of different mobility devices. >> so it will help us organize how we use our money and our resources in those existing programs. it will help us make kinds of decisions that often you will actually weigh in on around how we're expanding certain programs or it might be how we

staff certain things because the board will have said we endorse these actions in this plan and therefore we will endeavor to meet that moment and meet the plan itself. >> so there are specific actions. so that's really important that you look at those because that we will take those quite seriously when we have projects that come forward that come out of this plan they and they come to you for approval obviously will go through a process that uses this plan as the policy directives on who and how we're working with community. but also there will be findings within those approvals that use the plan as a basis for an approval so it hands you some tools to be able to say does this meet the plan? how this project is coming forward? does it close a gap? does it is it near schools? >> so it gives you some tools as decision makers as well. >> but it seems like we're pulling punches on a couple of these subjects like gap closures. i mean if you closed all the gaps and then you went in later and wanted to build a project

to close a gap, you know, boom boom. but what what you've been telling me is that it doesn't close all the gaps. >> well, we don't know. we're not close them. >> yeah. then move forward on that basis . well the reason that it doesn't close all the gaps right now is because it we're still trying to understand and develop some of the technical solutions and also looking at how how much funding it would it take not that we have the resources but some things are very expensive and very complicated did because of all the technical considerations so you might be able to do it if you had some absurd amount of money. >> right. so one of the most important parts of this plan is also that we're looking at how we update information around it every two years. >> so this is a more active process rather than saying we're going to do a huge project in 15 years and come back and assess everything which this is a big effort to do all of this. we're going to come back in two years using this framework using our north star map, using the readiness that we've talked

about using these technical constraints and will tell you, hey, how are we doing? what are the challenges that we're facing where have we had successes? where are we still needing support to get more resources? and i just want to also be very clear because this came up a number of time in the room which is that our capital resources are very different than our operational. these are very different kinds of streams of money. we don't know where some of that grant funding which is most likely or a lot of this is going to come from we don't know what that picture looks like over time we may be able to get funding through federal or state sources as well. so we need to come back and give you all in the communities that we've been working with an update on how we're doing and that's a form of accountability is that transparency and we have a like an ongoing list of projects that we want to do whether it's the quick builds or whatever else how do they relate in time to this big sort of slower moving plan? >> well, i will happy to defer to my livable streets colleagues to matt if he wants to come up and talk about where we are within this moment with some of the things that are

coming forward leave you're doing i can't leave him alone. >> i have to keep going. >> i won't speak to some of the ones that are most immediate but i think that acting director kirschbaum has also given us a really great kind of analogous process in transit which was muni forward. so you have to have kind of that big picture and then you say we're going to go for x amount of you know, millions for this and then we're going to do this piece and we're going to do this piece but you know that it's going somewhere you know that it will be connected because you've already thought that through. you've also had a big transparent conversation with san francisco at this moment and you are hearing from people right now where they are and that is what we are trying to reflect in this plan and then we're trying to see that not all these voices represent the same thing and history also matters. so in two years when we come back we can take another picture of kind of where we are and we also see this is very different by generation. so generationally things we anticipate to change direction . >> well, madam chair, i you

laid this out as seeking advice from us about what we'd like to see in february and the advice i'd like to to give on that is that we do need to clarify what this plan does and what it doesn't do. yeah and there are plenty of plans including the one that i used to manage over at mtc that are budget constrained that our project specific so yes i think as you said earlier you've got to figure out the lingo you're using and we're using plan in a particular way that may differ from other plans that people are familiar with. so i think it'd be helpful to have that intersect with the budget question and the project question and all the rest of it. so we don't misunderstand each other. >> i will say this is an unconstrained at this point we know we can do some wallpapers to call blue sky planning. >> that's what this is would you say well you're more uh i don't know we're using

northstar so similar atmospheres tend to be star first i'll use northstar but i think you know we all in our daily lives we can make last minute decisions or we can make short term decisions and those can work for us for a certain period of time. but if we take a step back and we figure out you know, how we're going to, you know, do things in our lives overall we make healthier choices, we make more financially savvy choices. >> there are a lot of planning talking yeah, that's okay we can get so madam chair have a bit of advice for all of us for what it's worth and that is we're not going to save money by dumping on bikes or other modes and i hope we can take that to heart. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> director chen thank you chair let's see as a quick

level set you know this is not enough for staff but just so just in response to some of the public comment, you know, i think i think this plan is really promising in the sense that we want to give people transportation choices because i think a lot of folks do because of where they are, because of the streetscape. right. they only have a few choices and that might mean they have they feel like they have to drive or they feel like they actually can't get get to places. and i'm thinking about people who are who don't have a driver's license. people who are under 18 or under 16, people who can't afford a car, you know. so there are some there is a metric i think in the community action plan report that says that, you know, african-americans there's something about a 30% daily active like micro-mobility usage and i was like that's a that's a lot. >> so there is these populations that are that are using that that have incomplete options and if we gave people options so that a seven year old could bike to school or so that someone is able to get to

work after hours you know on an e-bike safe and they can feel safe doing that. that's something that i really hope that we can empower and i i hope also that you know, that that these are choices that people can see that they that this is net helpful for san francisco that means that you know if you know if everybody kept driving they think the same way that we drove and the population kept going up this would not be great for traffic you know every additional person biking on the road is one less is less people driving, less people taking ubers, less people competing for parking on chestnut street or on fillmore street. and so you know i, i, i actually there is a there is a private shuttle that actually has a little detail on the back that says oh yeah you know this bus takes 50 vehicles off the road and i almost feel like we should make sure that you know when we talk about transit or sustainable transportation that these are that these are things that are net helpful and help the system of san francisco go help people get to their work, their school, their health, their hospitals and you know

and these are also these also help you know, not just our transportation sustainability goals but also thinking about you know more generally people biking do not get into 90 mile per hour collisions and cause like traffic and cause traffic deaths people generally biking or scooting or walking right? ah that's certainly good for public health. it's also great for reducing air pollution. i know it's late so sorry. director hemminger i'm going to move on so okay so questions i have a questions about the community action plans and so i i'm versus november i think we got a lot more clarity. i actually am grateful i think to have this process and i actually hope that maybe we should do more of that so that well we should actually hope that maybe that we somehow process make a process of making sure that we hear community needs because i think sometimes mta is staff so we we come and say we have this project and and then the

community says well we've been asking for x, y, z for the past ten years. what about these things? and so i appreciate so i appreciate the work i was going through the report and i have i have some i have some questions about sequencing, right? >> so i think there is there's a set of policies and actions in these reports and when you know some of them directly address you know, talking about the bike network, some of them i think it's sort of implied in the sense of like oh how do we create separation of scooters and walking like from the sidewalks like what is the how how how how does planning how does how how do stuff like think about like you know where where is it like we have to check all the boxes we have to do all the things and then and then assess or like you know what exactly how do these things go together? i wonder if the bike program manager wants to talk on it but i, i do we do use our professional judgment in weighing all of the things and when we will come back to

you with a recommendation we'll be able to talk about what we did and why we think it's why we should get this project approved. okay. thank you. so it sounds like it sounds like you are going to do these things and then you know if conditions are right then then kind of like try to try to get get try to start the process right on this thing and ideally right there should be we should be the work that the work that we built on on this side in the community action plan will help us build build the will will create credit rights so we can kind of also create these other projects is that you use the word credit which is throwing me off a little bit. this is more about relationship building and sharing knowledge and facilitating facilitation building trust. yeah great. and then a lot of the points right? so for example there's a thing about maintenance of of the street and and the sidewalks and i do not know this actually for a long time but you know and most maybe most people don't know this but but actually like the street

and sidewalks are public works right they're not actually mta's so there's actually a lot of things there's lots of policy things where it's like oh well it requires interfacing with planning or the public or the police department or public works or or requires budget, right? or like kind of like there's there's funding requirements so how are those departments aware of these plans? yes. and are they saying are they also signing off on these plans? >> um, they are aware so we've talked to them, we've showed them the community action plans. we've asked questions around how do we get this prioritized. we are not going to those departments and asking for approval got it. >> i so the reason i'm asking is that my interpretation of some of the some of the parks that mta has done in partnership with public works such as venice and public utility such as venice or or travel. right. i think the mta has been the leading agency and there have been kind of like changes or

disruptions, right. that are not necessarily within it's not necessarily the media's fault but because the mta is the face of the project i think that there that there's a lot that people seem to blame the mta to say oh it's well it's a bustling project. we we didn't we we didn't think about the sewers and the pipes and the and the underground work right but we also but we don't we only really see the bus and it took seven years and therefore mta is is awful so how my concern with something like this that is that if if mta and the board signs off on this community action plan it requires a lot of interdepartmental work and probably also mayoral you know, level leadership if that does not come through that then mta will get all the blame. i think that's a fair question, something that we've talked to

with our community partners and i don't know if major you want to speak on it but we've we've talked about those types of what that facilitation looks like. i think it part of building trust and part of community building is sharing and being really transparent about what that process is. we will make the right introductions to the people that you need to talk to. we'll share the community action plan is something that our board has signed off on and we will work to identify projects that could where there could be overlap. right now some one of the technical feasibility pieces that you saw earlier was how do we work with other agencies to build opportunities for implementation? okay. i, i hope that i hope that's good enough else it feels like the mta right? it's it's great that we've done this work and it also is like you know we are we are in some ways the interfacing with other departments and almost acting like you know like the

neighborhood office. so i think as much as want some things that i, i hope that we can some of these things if possible i think trying to make sure that these are measurable actions that say that to say that oh how has the mta fulfilled sort of like you know these goals to say hey like we have made we have we have we have worked with what we have we have worked with public works. we have tried to find we have tried to identify funding. we've we've made we've made dedications of staff time. i think that's something that so i think everyone can agree to say that oh mta did did staff did did what what has been promised because i feel like sometimes with these some of these things i feel like it's easy to move the goalposts because i think what the common understanding of some of these goals might be is is different so committee action plan my i have i have any before i have

maybe four points of feedback number one sort of the network i feel like the 20 year plan we we we don't know a lot of what's going to happen in 20 years so i know that i know that the staff is discussing this as a floor. i really hope that it's some i feel like people will engage with this as well use that as a baseline and what she as a ceiling and so we don't know what's going to happen 20 years we don't know our funding situation. we don't know we don't even know what the best in class like you know, bike lane treatment will be. we don't know exactly what projects will look like in 20 years so they think there's a lot of things that can happen. so if as possible it's almost like you know, make create create a network, try to be try to create a network, try to act i think unconstrained as we as a discussion director hemminger right to say you know if there were no constraints you know, to try to create this all ages ,all abilities network what would that look like? and in some ways i actually would not even write down what the facilities should be

because there's a because we actually don't even know what this facilities could be. so i almost feel like that should be that that when we say northstar it should be unconstrained and and because that and also knowing that there is no as we discussed right there is no binding there is no binding thing like exactly what that's going to be . and secondly i think that for advocates and for people who really want to make sure to hold the mta accountable, we should have you know, maybe in consultation with the streets team to say to say this is the ten year plan, this is this is the two year plan. this is the this is what we are 90% confident that we can deliver under the budget and the political situation that it in in the city and so as you know maybe the elephant in the room is sort of like there's a politic there's i think we're trying i think it's like we that there are places where it's going to be easier and harder and we have limited staff time. we have limited money. i want i want to be able to say to say the mta commits to doing

to be to be able to fill these parts of the network with at least this level of safety and if possible also be able to say and in so that's a 90% confidence then a 50% confidence of well if if we have extra time in room these are the products that we would go after so some level and that can provide you know some level of a two year and a four year roadmap. >> i don't think that i, i understand there's no constraints. i also want i also i think i think i want some engage and and again and this is not i don't think these things have to be binding right but i think this is something that this is the direction that mta staff want to go at this moment and that's something that i think that that that can be can be up for discussion as as things evolve since number two number three i think there was a discussion about school zones there was some i think that's very that's something i think very exciting. i've seen you know, looking at daycares and some schools like

that they drop off and pick off is like oh my god like you know, trying to trying to get through is like is just like there's a lot going on and and i've seen i think on mta we do we do white zone training so you know being able to widen i think the drop off pick up zone right i think is would be and in making it easier for kids to be able to say okay well we don't we don't have to we don't have to all pick up and drop off at this one zone. we can also kind of like widen in that area. we can create opportunities for kids to come on other ways would be great. i think we can go i, i think that's actually a great way to grow potential activate active riders and so i so i hope that we can we can try to prioritize those or also kind of add that to a two year plan. and then fourth i was thinking about community readiness i think i'm sorry i talked to staff and november about like what exactly is community readiness. i would like to think about you know, how do we think about spas? well one thing is me perhaps

sponsorship and i don't and and that can come through a different couple of different ways but it's something community readiness in priority equity community is thinking about sponsorship and in some ways i think this staff have already done this a bit by working with podia and with and with and some of filipinos and these other another groups is to say you know can we can can we find people who are our in the communities who can who can help create who can help sort of like create this conversations? you know, that could be the supervisors office that could be something that could be you know, someone that could be government that could be community. um, i don't i feel like you know some in some ways it's it's sort of like you know, how do we make sure that people i want to make it i want to i want to say we want to say that, you know, we are going to be working with the community i also don't want to necessarily

constrain it too much but i think some level of sponsorship making sure that we are also prioritizing safety and also places where we think that we could we're places where it's like you know, we think we can activate a lot of possible writers. so those are my those are my kind of like for points of feedback. >> thank you. yeah. thank you. director chen welcome back to hector kahana. >> i i'd like to i know you just walked in the door. we were just completing our board feedback on the bike and road plan. did you want to maybe maybe briefly uh, very briefly. i just want to really think the staff and all the community members that worked together to come up with different plans for their respective neighborhoods i know it's a lot to balance and it's a lot of not just mixed emotions on on the plan itself but also

reconciling some of the historical harms that have happened irrespective of neighborhoods as well. so i just really appreciate how the team made sure to honor that history in the different in the respective plans that came up in different neighborhoods. i know it's a lot of work and i know this is a long term vision and so i just really hope to see more of that as we get deeper in the work. but thank you all for for all your thought partnership on this. thank you director kahana and thank you staff this has been a lot of feedback to hear and parse through. i won't add a tremendous amount to it. i really appreciate my colleagues for their thoughtful feedback. you know i, i agreed with many of the points. for me if i was going to drill down on what i think are some of the most important elements

of a success ful plan, i very much appreciated what emerged from our discussion and the idea that we are modeling this effort on the muni forward plan. i think that that is a really productive way to think about it. however i just want to say that you know faster, more reliable transit is is a lot easier for members of the public to get their head around. but that being said there is there's a tremendous amount of of public support for the improvements that were made for muni forward. i think it's very apparent how the city is working better and that wasn't the case when we introduced that plan i

suspect and so i, i think we should work toward envisioning a future where where there's a wide consensus that that what we've done has worked and i appreciate the continued emphasis on safety. i think that that's the most important. i, i feel compelled to say that i find it somewhat discouraging to hear the idea of safety diminished. i think it's tremendously important anyone who has lost a loved one in a traffic accident or unnecessary and unnecessary accident of any kind needs to be remembered when we talk

about safety not to mention people who are who experience life changing incidents that that unfortunately happen every day on our roads and and i, i would push back on the idea that it is not the place of the mta board to endeavor to make an improvement in that area regarding the plan the community action plans i think are a really fruitful place, a fruitful part of the work so far and i would really encourage enhancing that and improving on that building more i community engagement in that sort of way. one of the speakers i really appreciated hearing the speakers who took time to come

and talk about their already fulsome amount of work that they have done with sfm to here at our hearing was a it's not a small commitment on their part and one of the speakers talked about decisions being made without us and without our knowledge or consent as a as a harm and this is something that's very easy to have happen and of course it's in possible for us to reach every person and and prevent that from ever happening. but i really encourage us to focus on how do we very clearly and concisely communicate to the public how they can get involved and and to just kind

of report from the the business perspective i really feel that i've seen a lot of hopeful signs that the the if you speak about the business community which of course is a very complex you know, as diverse as any other community in san francisco. but if if you speak of communities that have experienced harms as a result of government actions, i think many people in the business community would say yes and it's not just mta, it's also all sorts of actions that are taken at the the government level that often make it more difficult or even sadly impossible sometimes to to make a living as a business owner and provide services to the community so i, i really want

to hear more about that in that specifically but other other ways that we are engaging and you know i hope that many of the members of the public who are their feedback is no don't don't move forward with any sort of plan whatsoever are feel invited to engage with staff. and you know, i think it's i think it's really admirable that people come and speak their mind at the at the board hearings but the the opportunity to really have an impact on what is being proposed and happens in these community meetings that i know staff is working very, very hard to have and i and i hope

that as we think about creating opportunities for engagement we're thinking really hard about how do we include people who you know, feel that decisions are being made without them and without their knowledge and consent and and i don't believe that's because folks haven't been invited. it's i, i think it's it's discouraging to hear people say that, you know it's it's a foregone conclusion and it doesn't matter what they say here at the hearings and i know that's not your intention so and just another thing that i heard in your in your responses to some of our questions are a request for robust feedback on the specific actions that are

outlined in the plan and it's a very long document but it is well worth anyone in the who's concerned on this to to read and knows and if that's the the feeling of staff that that's where we can be most helpful i, i encourage all of us to go and look at those in detail and and provide feedback but my overarching feedback is like anywhere that we can make this clear and concise and fewer words it's there's just a voluminous amount of material to to go through and it would be i think it would be really helpful if we could condense it down and into into goals that

are easily understandable and adaptable for a a yeah that the public can adopt shared goals for safety for working systems, for balance between modes of transportation. i hear just as much feedback that motorists want cyclists and scooter riders and everyone to be separated from them as i do from the cyclists i is something that i've observed. it does not feel safe to to not know when you might encounter someone because nobody wants to drive a car and cause someone's be involved in an accident where someone's life is ended or forever altered. so i think that there are a lot of shared goals to to work with

here for for the plan and i know that you know, all of that is a very tall order but i hope that feedback is helpful. thank you very much. thank you. okay. so the secretary's silver please call the next item. very good. before i read the next item into the record i will announce that closed session item three a will be heard at a future meeting place as you on item 13 discussion and vote pursuant to government code section 54957.6 and admin code section 67. 10e as to whether to invoke the attorney client privilege and conduct a closed session conference with labor labor negotiator and or designated representatives and admin code section 67.10 d as to whether invoke to invoke the attorney

client privilege and conduct a closed session conference with legal counsel we will now open public comment for item 13 closed session seeing none i will close public comment. may i have a motion and a second to go into closed session so move moving on closed second i also was there a second that i heard the second. >> yes. okay thank you. >> so secretary silva, please call the roll on the motion to go into closed session director chen i chennai director hemminger i hemminger i director henderson henderson i director lindsey i am the director coquina i i chair tarlov i tarlov i thank you the board will now go into closed session okay

item 14 all right. item 14 the board met in closed session did not hear item three a voted to approve item three b and took no action on item four places you on item number 15 motion to disclose or not disclose information discussed in closed session colleagues may i have a motion and a second motion not to disclose second secretary silva please call the roll on the motion to not disclose director chen by chen i director hemminger hemminger director henderson henderson i director lindsey high in the director coquina i kahi and i chair tarlov i tarlov i thank you the motion passes and concludes the business before you today meeting adjourned thank you who

welcome to san francisco's new revitalized qatar valline this is not just an upgrade is a community transformation. taraval street under a complete make over from 10 feet below the street to 30 feet above. >> it is part of the taraval

improve am project to impprove transit performance and make the streets safer for all who use them. completed on time and on budget, this multiagency construction project is a once in a generation investment to bring safer, more reliable train service, increased accessibility. beautiful corridor, refresh roadway and reliable water and sewer systems for decades to come. >> safety is at the forefront of this transformation. new train boarding platforms are a game changer for safety am before the project 5 people per year were hit by vehicles gettinga or off trains we add 22 new or extended boarding plat forms on the route. riders no long are exit on the street along side traffic. when my kids were young it was heard they want to plunge off

the train straight in the street. up on the h stop now we have the platform that is broader when they are excited get off the trin and get home i feel better about them jumping off the train. >> having island where hay step on to is a giant improvement. >> these disability crosswalks look good and improve safety by making it noticeable to drivers. >> sidewalk extensions at intersection corners shorten the distance needed to cross the street and slow downturning vehicles. these and other safety treatments are proven tools to reduce the risk of collisions make the taraval corridor safer and inviting for people walking and driving. another key part was replace being two miles of train track for thes first time in almost 50

years. the old tie and balist track was built for muni oldt cc streetcars and old are light trail trains not today's modern vehicles and it was noise and he prone to vibration. >> these new rails will make for a smoother, quieter ride and require less maintenance. it is much quieter with the new impresumes i livid here the entire time and plays earthquake or municipal when he it came by now we don't have to play anymore >> before when the streetcar went by i would stop talk the street cars would rumble past now i share that confirmation. i like the fact well is not a 3.4 quake every time they go by now. it is quiet temperature feels like sliding on glass. >> this project is more than rails and concrete it is people

earngaging with their community. >> local residents and merchants have told us when their community need and had than i want in their neighborhood. a quieter reliable train roadway and safer streets for people walk. gi think it is essential. i'm excited and wonderful to have a safe way it get to work i work on embarcadero i take it to the end of the line every day >> through open house, public meetings and surveys members helped shape where the stops should go to the curb plan and selecting trees and art work for the corridor. >> we relied on community feedback during construction of the project. with voting held to choose where to stow construction materials and how to sekwenls the construction. >> as a result the project was split in two segments to reduce impacts to the community. access ability is at the forefront of the design. new features ensure people all

abilities enjoy seamless travel on the taraval. these platforms and key locations have a raised boarding area level with the train to help people with walking aids or strollers board more easily. >> warning lights are flashing. >> pedestrian signal announcements assist with visual impairment its cross the street. new curb ramps are essential in providing accessible path of travel on to and off of sidewalks. the sunset district has long been shaped by transand i the qatar valcontinues linking past to present. on the heels of a new tunnelful muni tear van line opened as a shuttle from westportal to 33rd avenue in 1919.

it was not until a few years later the trains used the tunnel sparking a population boom. previously, riders transfer to the circumstance line to go east of what is today known the westportal neighborhood. by 1923, passengers could catch a one seat read on the taraval between downtown and 48th avenue. for the first time, san franciscans had a connection from the bay to the ocean tide. the taraval street cars brought development people could access the south western neighborhoods. homes and buildings sprung up from the once empty dunes. this vielth east/west corridor is the spine the neighborhood carrying over 30,000 daily riders when service last ran the route in 2019.

today, it is a bustling local business that give this area its flavor fr. cafes to quirky but teaks the taraval connects tout best of san francisco's small business scene. >> i lost fact it is not a money on cultural it is multicult rar. korean, chinese. vietnamese. french. italian. we got irish. we got a lot of good mix on this street of restaurants and businesses in those cultural veins and good ole american. helping local line help our small businesses because this is again a small community. and the traffic here is not if you have to generate big revenue. with the l train from other parts of the city to this area has help us the small merchants as well to generate more

business. >> taraval street is a reflection of the outer sunset's unique character. >> this two mile stretch of transit is not just getting from a to b it is reimagining how we move through our city to shop, dine and experience more in the places we live. >> i live in the suburbs i have to take a car or a bus that was an experience i never did again as a teen. now my kids can visit their friends cross the establishment it is a huge increase in their freedom and independent. one of the reasons we chose to raise a family in san francisco. >> it is wonderful to have a safe, clean reliable way to get to work for the neighborhood i'm excite body what it means to bring others back to our neighborhood. we have, let of interesting shops and restaurants and i'm excited to see how things become when it is easier to get here.

>> a lot know each actively it is a close knit community. in my shop i know customers by name i know what they'll order and i have it ready for them. >> what i'm most excite body the street is now unified, we have new paved roads and new rails. and new lighting. new boarding island. >> today, your new street features newrism upgrade water and sewer pipes. 5 new priority signals that hold green lights when trains approach. sidewalk extensions to make pedestrian crossing safer. high visibility crosswalks and ramps. safe boarding islands and platforms. new trees, landscaping and art. is it time you responsiblesed this corridor to the end of the line? with great food, walks on the beach and san francisco's new

add upon ventures a ride away now the sunset district is more accessible than ever. [♪music♪] ♪♪ ♪♪

>> roughly five years, i was working as a high school teacher, and i decided to take my students on a surfing field trip. the light bulb went off in my head, and i realized i could do much more for my students taking them surfing than i could as their classroom teacher, and that is when the idea for the city surf project was born. >> working with kids in the ocean that aren't familiar with this space is really special because you're dealing with a lot of fear and apprehension

but at the same time, a lot of excitement. >> when i first did it, i was, like, really scared, but then, i did it again, and i liked it. >> we'll get a group of kids who have just never been to the beach, are terrified of the idea, who don't like the beach. it's too cold out, and it's those kid that are impossible to get back out of the water at the end of the day. >> over the last few years, i think we've had at least 40 of our students participate in the city surf project. >> surfing helped me with, like, how to swim. >> we've start off with about two to four sessions in the pool before actually going out and surfing. >> swimming at the pool just helps us with, like, being, like, comfortable in the water and being calm and not being

all -- not being anxious. >> so when we started the city surf project, one of the things we did was to say hey, this is the way to earn your p.e. credits. just getting kids to go try it was one of our initial challenges for the first year or two. but now that we've been doing it three or four years, we have a group of kids that's consistent, and the word has spread, that it's super fun, that you learn about the ocean. >> starting in the morning, you know, i get the vehicles ready, and then, i get all the gear together, and then, i drive and go get the kids, and we take them to a local beach. >> we usually go to linda mar, and then occasionally ocean beach. we once did a special trip. we were in capitola last year, and it was really fun.

>> we get in a circle and group stretch, and we talk about specific safety for the day, and then, we go down to the water. >> once we go to the beach, i don't want to go home. i can't change my circumstances at home, but i can change the way i approach them. >> our program has definitely been a way for our students to find community and build friends. >> i don't really talk to friends, so i guess when i started doing city surf, i started to, like, get to know people more than i did before, and people that i didn't think i'd like, like, ended up being my best friends. >> it's a group sport the way we do it, and with, like, close camaraderie, but everybody's doing it for themselves. >> it's great, surfing around, finding new people and making new friendships with people throughout surfing. >> it can be highly

developmental for students to have this time where they can learn a lot about themselves while negotiating the waves. >> i feel significantly, like, calmer. it definitely helps if i'm, like, feeling really stressed or, like, feeling really anxious about surfing, and i go surfing, and then, i just feel, like, i'm going to be okay. >> it gives them resiliency skills and helps them build self-confidence. and with that, they can use that in other parts of their lives. >> i went to bring my family to the beach and tell them what i did. >> i saw kids open up in the ocean, and i got to see them connect with other students, and i got to see them fail, you know, and get up and get back on the board and experience success, and really enjoy

themselves and make a connection to nature at the same time. >> for some kids that are, like, resistant to, like, being in a mentorship program like this, it's they want to surf, and then later, they'll find out that they've, like, made this community connection. >> i think they provided level playing fields for kids to be themselves in an open environment. >> for kids to feel like i can go for it and take a chance that i might not have been willing to do on my own is really special. >> we go on 150 surf outings a year. that's year-round programming. we've seen a tremendous amount of youth face their fears through surfing, and that has translated to growth in other facets of their lives. >> i just think the biggest thing is, like, that they feel like that they have something that is really cool, that

they're engaged in, and that we, like, care about them and how they're doing, like, in general. >> what i like best is they really care about me, like, i'm not alone, and i have a group of people that i can go to, and, also, surfing is fun. >> we're creating surfers, and we're changing the face of surfing. >> the feeling is definitely akin to being on a roller coaster. it's definitely faster than i think you expect it to be, but it's definitely fun. >> it leaves you feeling really, really positive about what that kid's going to go out and do. >> i think it's really magical almost. at least it was for me. >> it was really exciting when i caught my first wave. >> i felt like i was, like -- it was, like, magical, really. >> when they catch that first

wave, and their first lights up, you know -- their face lights up, you know you have them hooked. >> i was on top of the world. it's amazing. i felt like i was on top of the world even though i was probably going two miles an hour. it was, like, the scariest thing i'd ever done, and i think it was when i got hooked on surfing after

. >> ready to go. thank you very much. i'm going to ring the gavel. the time is 104. and good afternoon and welcome to the meeting of the executive committee. on wednesday, january 15th, 2025 i've called the meeting to order. i would ask our commission secretary monroe's dhaliwal to call the roll