fabric and culture of our city i now call them march 4th 2025 regular meeting of the municipal transportation agency board of directors and parking authority commission to order secretary silva please call the roll on the roll director chen. president chen president director henderson henderson president director lindsey pleasant lindsay president director kahuna here you know present chair tarlov tarlov

present director hemminger is not expected today. for the record i know that director lindsey is attending this meeting remotely. director lindsey is reminded that she must appear on camera throughout the meeting and in order to speak or vote on any items places you want. 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 device. >> please also note that a reminder that the board did not tolerate disruptions or outbursts during it during its proceedings. >> this includes clapping or booing. if you want to show support or opposition you may do so silently. this could be a thumbs up or thumbs down or as such. thank you for your cooperation. i do ask that everybody here find a seat. we do have an overflow room in the northlight court on the ground floor but it's looking like i think we have enough seats for everyone right now. >> places you want. item number four approval of minutes for the february at&t

directors. >> are there any changes to the minutes? >> we'll now open public comment on item four for two minutes each. >> members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. there will be a warning sound at 30s and then a time when the time is up. any speakers for the minutes can come up to the podium at this time seeing none and no accommodations. >> we'll now close public comment. >> colleagues is there a motion and a second so moved. >> second secretary silva please call the roll. >> on the motion to approve the minutes director chin chennai director henderson henderson i director hindi ai india director coquina cooking i chair tarlov i tala via the minutes are approved secretary silva please call the next item. >> next item item number five communications i have none.

>> next item three good places on item six the directors report. good afternoon. i'm excited to be here and cover a range of topics. >> the first i want to talk about is a great highway update as a result of proposition k on the november 2024 ballot. san francisco voters opted to close the great highway from lincoln to sloat to create space for a new park. the permanent closure is expected in early spring and rec and park will be announcing a more detailed timeline tomorrow. this will affect transportation on the west side and as a result our staff has been very focused preparing the city for this change. in doing so our priorities are to keep the streets safe for everyone and to keep traffic

flowing. we've been working with caltrans and the department of technology to activate three new traffic signals for the rerouted vehicles that includes one at forty-firsts and lincoln one at sloat and skyline and one at skyline and great highway. these signals were completed in record time in order to meet the traffic flow needs for this project and i especially want to commend staff for all of their hard work and creativity to tackle the intersection of 41st and lincoln where we installed a temporary signal in order to meet the project timeline. this work is also going to benefit from public works having completed the paving on

sunset boulevard which will be the primary new route for the diverted traffic. we do know that this change will have this change will impact many living in the outer richmond and the outer sunset and our staff is committed to continually continually monitoring monitoring traffic on the major streets like lincoln sunset and sloat as well as the residential streets to identify areas for improvement. but i really want to thank the staff mta staff especially our signals design and paint shop along with livable streets street use and the development and signal subdivision for all of their work to meet the city's timeline for this project. all three signals are currently turned on and we will be completing some final work right before the park closes at

lincoln and great highway to complete the park closure. >> i next want to talk about the all-star weekend and the chinese new year parade. as you know we had two huge events february 15th and 16th and i think in my last report i talked a little bit about the success of those events but we didn't have the data yet and since the data was so impressive i really wanted to come back and share how successful we were over the three days of all-star. we carried 1.2 million people. we thanks to the generosity of the board of supervisors we were able to provide free service citywide on saturday and sunday, the saturday of the lunar new year an all star was the best weekend day we've had

since the pandemic and the end juda and the l terrible had their busiest days since 2019 but i think most their busiest saturday since 2019. but i think most impressive is the teeth third carried almost twice as many passengers as it does on the typical saturday. so we're continuing to see our muni service shine during these special events and it is absolutely a ridership generation tool for us because as people check out the system to get to a special event it makes them much more likely to use transit for other trips. i also want to talk about a change that we are making to the 30 short line. in november we came to the s.f. mta board with the first of a modest set of cost saving technique weeks for the service

and many of those changes were implemented on february 1st including some small increases in the week the weekday headways on several routes. we also added the 30 express for two trips because of the heavy demand for people going from the marina to the financial district in the salesforce tower. and at that time we were also going to make a change to have the throw short line which provides extra crowding capacity on the 30 long line instead of going all the way to caltrain and at union square. so that was an attempt to keep service where we were seeing the heaviest ridership. but savories sources south of market. and we were able to consider

that change because ridership on the t line has increased so significantly since we opened the subway particularly at the chinatown station. we have been meeting pretty continuously with community stakeholders since we first started talking about that change and i'm really pleased that yesterday we announced that through these community partnerships and this i think very deep listening we've been able to come up with a modification to the proposal that saves the same amount of resources but addresses the community concerns that we were hearing and specifically what the community was sharing with us was that for many of the stakeholders in chinatown including some of the loudest voices we heard were from the merchant community serving the

seniors living south of market and having them have better frequency was actually more important than maximizing how we were addressing crowding through chinatown. so while while we have less ridership south of market particularly the there's a lot of chinese speaking seniors who live near folsom street and do a lot of their daily activity in chinatown. so as a result we will be decreasing the frequency a little bit on the 15 short but we will be extending it south of market street. we will continue to have strong service to caltrain the 30 long line, the 45 the t will still go to caltrain but the 30 short will make its last stop on mission at mission and then turn around at at folsom.

>> another project that i want to give you an update on is the valencia project construction on the new side running valencia street bike lanes started on february 18th. we are completing the project in partnership with public works and we are trying to be really proactive in how we are communicating with residents and merchants during the construction process. as you recall the side running project was approved by the sfm to board in november and based on strong feedback from the business community we are working very, very hard to get the project completed before the summer shopping season. crews began work on valencia in 23rd and have now moved to 20th street. they've set up the work zone and closed down the center running bike lane. they've removed the intersection striping at the

15th and 23rd street intersections. they've removed rubber barriers and the case 71 delineate or posts on the road. they've removed the screws that fastened these barriers into the road and their grouting over the holes. this work will eventually be smoothed out with new paving and when the center lane is fully removed crews will begin repaving in early april. >> the installation of the side bike lane as i said, we're working to complete it before the summer stop shopping season. when the construction started we heard concerns from the public about the bike lanes temporary closure. we are responding to those concerns by increasing signage and looking into ways to encourage safe sharing of the traffic lanes amongst drivers and and cyclists. and we're just going to be continually iterating to make sure we're safely serving the

needs of all users. the side running lane is the result of a committed and deep outreach effort to listen to community concerns, but it does remain a project that particularly the merchants have reservations about. working with mayor lori and the city family we have tried to address that by looking at the kind of broader tools that we can bring to the corridor. so that includes things that support the neighborhoods like power washing which public works completed last week. we are also a couple of years ago we improved all of the lighting in the garages at 16th street and at 24th street but we are also going to make upgrades to the to the signage and make sure that the garages feel like a safe and welcoming

place to be. the merchant community also has a strong preference for reinstating three of the left turns in order to improve circulation. we are in the process of planning to add back left turns and our analysis is consider ting safety circulation and technical feasibility. we will also evaluate the left turns and use our best practices for left turn calming but we will bring this work back to the board once we're a little further into the into the design process. the project requires compromises from everyone and i really appreciate community community members ongoing engagement and our staff's responsiveness to the community concerns. we want safety for everyone traveling on valencia and we

want to create a great environment for people that are visiting, shopping, living in the valencia corridor. >> speaking of shopping, i next want to report out on a hop on muni pub crawl. i guess men one of the many things i didn't think i would be talking about in this seat is how how much fun we're having partnering with a small businesses including standard dv and brewery which hosted an event on february 21st. they created a special ipa called hop on muni and they helped launch a self-guided beer crawl to support local small businesses. 15 local businesses spread across several muni lines participated in the week long event and hundreds of community

members participated. i'm also really proud that the businesses we partnered with reported back that they did see an increase in foot traffic as a result of this collaboration . we also think it sent the message that we want to spend which is if you're send which is muni is a really safe way to get around when you're enjoying some of the city's nightlife activities. we are also continuing our partnership this year with the san francisco city football club. it's in its second year and we're going to continue looking for these types of great events through the leadership of our marketing team. and then lastly i want to share with you a very special event. it is a partnership with the t w to 50 operators union and it

is a deep focus on safety. on saturday we honored safe drivers with a luncheon at fuga de chao in san francisco. this event was attended by more than 90 operators and their partners are special guests and we were honored that mayor lori also came and got a chance to honor our staff in order to be invited to the luncheon. you have to have been a safe operator which means you have had no preventable collisions for 15 years or more. and we had some honorees that had more than 40 years of safe driving. so like since the 1970s these folks have been driving in san francisco without a collision. at the event we talked about

mentoring, building the next generation of rider of operators. we got to highlight safety and we got to thank our staff who are as you know, doing a very, very difficult job every day to keep san francisco moving. i want to thank vice chair keena and chair tarlov for also coming to the event and for the amazing staff that pitched in on their weekend so that we could we could take the time to celebrate this incredible achievement. thank you all to our honorees. you truly inspire us. >> and that concludes my report . >> i will now open public comment for item six the directors report. speakers will have two minutes each. members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes. there will be a warning sound at 30s and then the chime on the time is up. i do have speaker cards if you could cue up on the tv side.

christopher white fiona yam theory you can go ahead. >> you can find out your voice. >> marina kel hello and pads which is 22 neighborhood merchants association on the 30 stockton. we've had no cooperation and i'm a big fan of community drivers. so i really want to want more cooperation. reason why they're not getting the drive in the ridership on the chester corridor is that you eliminated every other stop in the eastern marina in the eastern marina which is 55% senior citizens and they have to walk sometimes up to four blocks to get to a bus. so now guess what? if they can't drive, their kids are coming and picking them up. >> you've added more cars. we have talked about this for years.

we need more cooperation. ha. also over the last three years bike racks. not against them but certain businesses said they didn't want it the next door neighbors didn't want it and the merchants didn't want it because it was a bad location. they stood up here and misrepresented back to you. >> this department that we all wanted it. now we've got a giant building that has just closed down because partially because of this. >> we need more cooperation and i worry about this board just taking carte blanche on what you're being told by the department and i think we need to have more in-depth studying about what's really happening. >> you're going to be hearing from me in the next two days too. we had a notice for a hearing at this court two hours after

it happened to to block off a whole street and none of the merchants had approved it. we need to have better cooperation and we need to work on it. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker for good afternoon mta board members christopher white, executive director of the san francisco bicycle coalition. while construction has started to move the valencia bikeways to curbside, there are two things i want to celebrate. the first is the work that the city is doing under mayor lurie's direction to hasten the commercial corridors recovery from multiple angles whether regularly power washing the sidewalks or improving the experience of those getting off the bart at 16th and 24th streets. the recovery needs a multi-pronged approach and safe biking is one of those prongs. i also appreciate the mayor's willingness to listen and learn and there's a lot to learn about the effects of street design choices. >> even after i was hit on my

bike by a person making a left turn in their suv in broad daylight, i didn't understand how unsafe left turns can be. but as fs vision zero data shows that 40% of pedestrians involved collisions involve making a left that's half empty. planners understood this and made the decision in the originally approved plan to continue prohibiting left turns on valencia for the sake of safety. >> reintroducing left is meant to improve traffic flow. >> however it will likely have the opposite effect because there is no room at intersections for signals to turn lanes. cars making lofts will have to sit at the intersection waiting for opposing traffic to clear. traffic will pile up behind them as they wait. this will induce pressure on the person turning to speed through the intersection at the first opportunity and that's a potentially deadly scenario for people walking, biking and rolling. while we appreciate the approach to bring stakeholders to come together to minimize when it comes to safety, we have to stand firm.

we oppose the reintroduction of left turns on valencia as unsafe and ineffective in achieving the intended goals. nobody wants a tragedy to rest on this decision so we ask the mayor, director kirschbaum and the board to maintain left turn prohibitions on valencia as originally passed. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker good morning director kirschbaum chair tarlov and directors. my name is fiona yim and i walk san francisco's communications and marketing manager. every day thousands of people walk on valencia. too many pedestrians have been hurt and even killed on valencia and this has often been caused by drivers making left turns left turns out especially dangerous because drivers often take these turns faster than right turns then go left turns creates blindspots and drivers are too often paying more attention to oncoming traffic than people in the crosswalk. drivers making left turns are one of the deadliest threats to pedestrians according to sfm tears own data.

passive empty data also shows that left turn restrictions work in reducing crashes. that's at the heart of vision zero succeeding in san francisco taking a data driven approach to making a data driven and proactive approach to prevent crashes. >> which brings us to valencia street the left turn restrictions that were added to valencia street as part of the center running bike lane pilot were significant safety improvement for pedestrians removing left turn restrictions on valencia street would be a major setback for safety which would be which must be the priority with every project every time. >> no compromises. removing left turn restrictions on valencia will compromise human life. so we're asking you to keep needed left turn restrictions on valencia street with 2024 being the deadliest year in a decade for traffic fatalities, this is no time to compromise. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> okay, so it's theory. so the advantage of owning intelligence is that it cannot destroy you and you see so i mean sandwich you're in a sandwich shop unintended.

>> okay. you're going to pay it's going to be very expensive for you. >> it's coming it's so what do we have here? >> no, everything's wrong. safety are a bit on many occasions comes with responsive pretty and critical thinking. >> that's it. you can't have safety otherwise don't think it's besides you can't fake anything you can't fake beauty you can fake ugliness as well because there is no point you can touch anything and so that's why if you fake you are an therefore i said this for you that's the way the rules of existence work. >> you can find them. it's not possible. so you're going to be on your badge. look on your badge like an absolute right? >> so you're going to self destroy you're going to die first. they'll basically good job. that's what you want. you're going to get it so don't worry keep reading your stupid scripts paid by whatever ugliness you get. it's i'll see you little miss

judy. >> thank you. another speaker card for yolanda castle cut sallow side only here a district resident and represent in connected s.f. a couple of things one i want to encourage the board to think about the budget deficit. i know you've done good work and we really appreciate the work you've put in to create suggestions for the $50 million deficit this summer but the looming big deficits coming up in 2026 and there's been limited conversation on this deficit. there's nothing on the agenda today regarding it. i would think about as the proposals you made part as part of the $50 million deficit which i think was 30 or $35 million from the capital budget. >> yet at the same time you're still proposing these projects such as quick builds, pipelines etc. on behalf of connected s.f. we actually are bikers as

well and but at the same time we're thinking about the flow how we can get from point a to point b in the most efficient productive manner within san francisco that doesn't always mean adding more bike lanes. >> i hope you take into consideration the encouragement of starting to think about the limit deficit without having to add more service cuts to muni moving forward. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker again this is for the directors report. >> yes my name your honor on the cycle and trump is alive and do more in san francisco. first of all it was newsom i was not terribly committed a crime and you are an undocumented immigrant. you get deported. that's what trump is doing. they're acting different than what the democrats have accomplished. but what i'm referring to here for mexican-american is the fact that i ride a 14 or 14

hour all the way from from first and mission to february mission and no time did i see any signs except yesterday about maybe do the 49 in english now in spanish not in any language. and i'm very worried because i get so i know this character and i was reading the report and i apparently you're going to divide and conquer. you're going to listen to the root there. so you know the major hispanics are them and the mission they take the 14th to go to daly city or to go to south city. how am i going to get rid of us? how am i to work gentrification jobs tomorrow? >> i'm sick and tired of it. thank you. next speaker good afternoon. my name is pete. don't count don't have that. my name is pete wilson. >> i'm a district five resident. i welcome you all the district five thank you for coming stephanie it's great to see you. i looked online. does you know your picture wasn't there. >> you weren't listed.

so let's make sure we get you back up on there. so thank you, janet. good to see you. now we can talk business right ? yeah, we can talk business now. it's good to see you saturday. good to see you as well, julie, i want to thank the director sean kennedy told us that the 30 short is going all the way to folsom because people in chinatown wanted that. thank you. we felt that t.w. local 258 that that having operators turn back at post was a recipe for disaster. i've driven the 30, i've driven the 45, i've been turned around early and people don't like it so we were pushing that you went that you turned back at mission but for whatever reason you're going to have to go all the way to folsom. >> this sign did say 58. it said spring break there are some people in the room does anybody here have kids who go to public school in san francisco? public school. thank you, rich. hey, look at that. there's there's sfm to operator who's kid goes to school public school.

we would wish that muni would allow parents whose kids are at public schools be allowed to sign up for that for for that break we were the operators were given a mini sign up to sign up through through march. so i said can it go through maybe april or even july? >> no. how about through april? no, i'm just saying april 4th you do your breaks based on a week and april 4th is the end of a week which includes three days from march. no, it's not the end of a pay period. >> well, i just did a defended an operator that said something wrong on a bus and the sfm to call them incompetent. well let me tell you 2022 spring break excuse me the the sign up did not end at the end of a pay period. >> please. thank you. don't be cruel.

>> any additional speakers in the room this is for the directors report anything that was mentioned in the report. >> hi, i'm bob fine president to save money. last time i was here i heard this report given by the acting director. and today i hear it being given by the new permanent director. so we want to appreciate julie for her new position. and one of the things that i'd like to say is that this agency is now about 25 years old and it was formed to further the muni. it was formed because the muni was the transportation system for san francisco and it still is.

unfortunately this agency has slipped a little bit as the military say has engaged in mission creep. and i'm hoping that julie will bring the agency back to its original purpose to support the muni and to fund the muni and to increase the service on the muni. with that said, i heard something and i'd just like to have a point of clarification. i heard somewhere that we are now providing 90% of pre-pandemic service. and to me that seemed to say that 90% of the service hours pre-pandemic are now being run by the muni. julie is that true or can you give us some more accurate figure? >> thanks. thank you. this is not a q&a period. just public comment and the other speakers in the room. >> seeing none we do have one

accommodation request. >> speaker you've been unmuted . >> herbert weiner my concern is that we the first priority is restoring muni services. my concern is for whatever reason and the only term that's been left and less and what over decade now it's important we have that bus service. and i think we have to preserve as much as possible. and i think the 430 bus should run for palace train station. and it's really creating a monster and sending. so the first priority should be preserving and enhancing the muni bus line.

>> thank you. thank you. no other speakers. >> thank you. we'll now close public comment. colleagues, are there any questions on the director's report? >> director henderson thank you. madam chair, i just have a question for about the all star weekend lunar new year celebration. were there any were there any particular highlights or lessons learned in preparation for next year's super bowl weekend? >> i think think thank you for that. i think it this event further solidified fied our systems for communication across the city that you know we're really starting to sharpen during a peak. and you know really you know further refined during this

event i think we have learned as an agency that having a dedicated point person who is actually outside of the special events groups which have a lot of day to day churn that they're doing to keep all of san francisco events going is is very helpful. also tony henderson who typically is focused on transit engineering and safety has been very open to stepping in and providing and kind of an agency coordinator role for these big events and i think we will continue to do that. and then the third thing is just it's really enforced the importance of early communication and and planning

. we can we can we can be very nimble i think as an agency if we have enough prep time to to work through the details. and so we will meet regularly with both the fifa and the super bowl sponsors in the same way that we did for four nba all-stars. >> that's very good. thank you. director chris mom, i wanted to just also say that i'm glad to hear about the ridership of the team and i think that for the super bowl in particular it'll be that line will be really important because it's that connection to the to the caltrain station that it makes down you know, a little down further south. and so if there's any you know i know we're going through a lot of planning process for around the upgrade the train control upgrade and also there

have been you know some changes here there with the t line. i just want to make sure that as you do the or as you plan for the maybe subway central subway improvements or anything that that involves maintenance or anything that we just keep that in mind because i think that getting folks i know a lot of the activities will occur in san francisco around super bowl but getting folks down to santa clara in an efficient way is going to be really important and so so i just wanted to to call that out but also say how excited i am to hear that there were so many more people riding. one of my favorite things to think about the in the t line and then also i wanted to just have a question about the the valencia changes. i know that you said you heard a lot of feedback from the

community and i remember through some of the hearings that we had you talked about the sort of rigorous community process that you had. have you had meetings with the community or the feedback that you're getting is sort of ad hoc and coming in through not through a formal meeting process but i think it's it's both. you know, we are providing regular construction updates to both the valencia merchants as well as to supervisor fielder who's helping us push out information. but we also have a robust mailing list from the planning process and we are pushing out weekly construction updates. >> victoria is going to come and help me. >> good afternoon chair members of the board yes, we're pushing out information weekly that goes out on monday and on top of that we do actually if you

recall have a construction working group which is our crews and members of the community and that construction working group did meet very recently again to receive feedback and to get information out. >> so we're doing all of the above that you just mentioned, right? that's that's good. and is the is there a way for community members to find out about the more formal ways the meetings or the sort of organized ways that you are collecting feedback and and also i remember that you all studied some of the pedestrian patterns and and try to sort of measure what the traffic flow was looking like during the during the past couple of years. >> and so i'm just curious about how people might be able to provide some feedback to you about what you know they think is happening or what would be best. but also do you have the ability to study what's happening just so that we can

have a baseline for now that we're going the other direction, have a baseline for the traffic patterns to compare to for a few months from now? >> yeah. so just to address those two points to point number one is the best way for the community to communicate with us is we do have a project email address and that's monitored very closely. it's on our website so that is the most concise and best way to get feedback on whatever's happening on the street during construction or post for that matter. and then yes we do plan to do some monitoring once the project is constructed of course just to see how it works . >> perfect. okay. thank you. thank you. thank you madam chair. >> i'm done. thank you, director kahana, please. thank you, chair. thank you so much for your presentation and julie and the report and to all the public comment i did have a question around or an appreciation rather for the 30 short update. i just wanted to congratulate the staff and folks from the

community liaison program in particular for all their work in coordinating with our tarrytown community leaders and community members there. >> i did hear from the grapevine that one of the outcomes of that connection with the community was a first time pilot of chinese characters on digital displays. so i just wanted to give you a space to talk about that and just a little bit more details about that pilot program. thank you for that question. when we started to to have these discussions, one of the concerns that we heard was that customers less familiar with the 30 short might just jump on the first 30 that showed up and not realize that they were only going to go as far as union square. i think it speaks to some of the feedback that pete wilson shared with you as well.

and we do plan before we roll out the change to do the outreach and to to have ambassadors out there. but we are also going to be testing for the first time including chinese characters in our destination head signs. so for some of our customers who read chinese, they'll be able to just look up at a glance and see oh, you know this vehicle is going to yerba buena or this vehicle is is going to to caltrain and we are so fortunate to have jesse liang who is our our liaison with the chinese speaking community and the chinese media because she gave a lot of thought to kind of what landmarks would be meaningful

in in chinese in some cases just using a street name is is more intuitive. and then in the other direction which is a you know something people are already used to getting off for venice and north point versus getting off in the marina. we will also have had signs for the first time for that direction as well. and honestly that is no minor feat and the transformative nature of just what could seem like a simple change is is incredible. so i just really want to recognize the team and all the community leaders for bringing that up as a need and for our responsiveness to to meet folks where they're at and actually create a system to pilot something in terms of just how your piloting there is just the structure of it and possibly thinking about how to scale this in the future and has it has the team given that some thought to seattle or what are you waiting for it to like scale it out to the rest of our

services? i think that's something that i would have to i'd have to get get back to you on. i think that the art of the head sign is that there isn't a lot of real estate right? so i think assuming that we get positive feedback on the 30 and the 30 short then i think we would just look to some of our community partners to figure out where else this type of information might might be valuable by while also balancing the fact that you know we have this very small number of characters that we have to work with and this is exciting. so thank you so much julie for that and i appreciate the work stream and i encourage it to grow. >> the other piece i was going to ask questions about was the valencia bikeway project

particularly around the left turn restrictions. i understand that the team right now is looking at different areas throughout the corridor where these left turns are more prudent. can you give us just some context or some color of like what are some of the considerations we're looking at? will they be signalized left turns just a little bit more context about that piece. >> i think that's exactly the kind of detail we're going to come back to you with. but we are we are looking at whether or not there should they can be signalized or whether they would be permissive and where they would how we reach the right balance between offering more opportunity to is to move on and off the corridor versus the potential cues you could have behind somebody waiting to make a left turn. so those are those are the

things we're looking at right now. the signals are not new so the technology may be one of our limiting factors but we are a team that is constantly looking at opportunities to innovate and be creative so that is one of the things we're looking at what we can do within the existing signal that we have to to look at a possible signalized solution. and julie, do you have a timeline that you could think of or can share maybe it's too early but in terms of when you guys think you're going to land on on a decision with that? >> well, our intention is to complete the entire project before the summer so it would be within the next few meetings that we would be coming back to you. >> thank you, julie. thank you chair thank you. director hennessy thank you

julie for your report as always. i had a question about sort of what the sales balance director henderson's one of your different topics. i know you had said that recreation and parking is going to come out with kind of the overall plan for gray. how and timeline for great highway tomorrow. but i was wondering what we're doing in terms of communicating about changes in traffic flow and turning what are our communication plan is going to be i know in a in a briefing a few weeks ago the trial of jury trial up and i talked about filing we'd like to see and that some of quality about what we're doing communication what yeah thank you i'd like to invite sts director victoria wise up to help with that question. >> thank you so much chair

directors about the great highway. yes we are planning communication of course about it. we're going to have social media communication about the closure which by the way is scheduled for march 14th. that is when the roadway is going to be closed. >> there's going to be some work that the puc is going to be doing and then in april the park is going to be opening. so just want to be clear about those dates and yes, we are planning social media communication and other kinds of newsletters. we are have signs that we fabricated and we'll also be our some of them are already up and covered but when it's time will be uncovered and we're working with google maps and other providers like apple maps to make sure that they are mapping the correct closure for we can't quite dictate how they'll route people. i wish i could but they are staying informed and abreast and will have that ready. >> perfect thank you manager thank you and you let email you

had a bad director taking out of order. >> thank you chair quick on the 30 short i'd like to thank the staff for working with the community in my personal experience also writing the 30 and the 45 i see a lot of people getting off on market street so i hope that so i think that sacrifice the trade off for having a little less frequency for making sure that people can have that make that trip without transfers i think is very helpful. so thank you very much. very excited about the chinese characters and maybe a note to staff or maybe if you i don't know if you wanted to respond right now but what i've heard some feedback from less frequent writers is being able to differentiate between the short and the long lines because i think for some for less frequent writers they just assume that the that all the busses are the long busses so that so i've seen this mostly on the wall in california because there's a there's a

going westbound there's one that goes all the way out to 33rd avenue and there's one that goes to presidio and so i'm not sure if there's a if there is a good solution or information but something maybe some feedback if maybe if transit could come back and think about think about that or if you'd like to respond now. >> yeah i the 30 s is is is sort of a unique in that it has an additional letter after it and i think it's because that corridor has been you know very focused on some of these communication challenges i have pushed back on other requests to differentiate the short kind of for this reason which is that the short lines are really crowding management tools and when they start to get

their own numbers they and we reduce them or increase them based on demand it starts to feel like a much bigger take than just the more modest schedule adjustment that that it is. so we have relied on the destination rather than having a unique number or having the s after it in part to try to manage community expectations around what is essentially a cost effective schedule managing tool. okay great. thank you. i yes this is maybe maybe a longer conversation but i would love to see how we could reduce confusion and also just make sure we have that people have our having their expectations met when they're writing and then secondly you know for the left turns i have some well given that in the past couple of years especially you know

that there have been some collisions and fatalities on valencia between 16th and 20th and particularly in the news there has been many of the fatalities have been seniors. >> you know, i am i understand the desire for left turn for left turns but i am also very concerned by by the safety impact, you know how what is um how is traffic figuring that in when when you're deciding which streets or what places might make the most sense and and yeah thank you for that question. >> we as you know have a program for left turn calming those designed best practices will be incorporated here and we are also looking at other key issues and safety data as we approach this there

there is some tension here. you know the having no left turns or is something that was conceived in of the original design. it also doesn't anticipate for example illegal left turns you know which sometimes can happen when you have, you know, extensive periods of restricted left turns and it it it it didn't quite i think reach that balancing act that we need between all of the different concerns in the corridor. so we will be we will be bringing this back and sharing further with you but i it's something that we are we're grappling with and working through. >> thank you. thank you, chair thank you julie for your report and i

just would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the operators who were recognized on saturday for their safe operating records. i think that that event is tremendously important for communicating to everyone that that safety is the number one goal and i and it was also a very fun time so thank you very much for allowing vice chair kahana and i to to come it it was really it was really great and to to see the operators and their family and the families and the pride that they take in their work is really encouraging and a really wonderful event.

>> secretary silva, please call the next item. very good actually before i call that item unfortunately we cannot have people sitting or standing in the aisles to observe the meeting. >> i do see some open seats kind of in the center of the audience area perhaps if you have an open seat next to you you can raise your hand so that people can come and find a seat . >> if not i do have an overflow room in the north light court on the first floor. the meeting is being streamed live and so you'll be able to view and hear the meeting. thank you places you on item number seven the citizens advisory council report we have no report and item number eight new or unfinished business by board members directors is there any new or unfinished business? thank you. we're so no public comment is necessary. correct? well secretary silva please call the next item places you

and item number nine general public comment. members of the public may address the board of directors on matters that are within the board's jurisdiction and are not on today's calendar. so this excludes any comment about the biking and rolling plan which is item number 11 for today's meeting. >> members of the public to miss two minutes. yes, members of the public wishing to comment will have two minutes each. there will be a warning sound at 30s and a time when the time is up again. >> let's see we did receive a request for language services for this item at this time i do have two interpreters here for spanish and portuguese translation and so if i could have our translators come up to announce that you are available to assist in public comment that would be helpful. look again i said on commentary of the bully koala mr. leader,

given its final interpretation is by look at where you stand. >> okay. thank you. i do french people don't need that. >> i mean i mean you just need to speak english. >> it's us. say here sir, you're speaking out of order. may please have our translator and share me to the board of supervisors is waiting for me but again this is a further comment that in portuguese device starkey available this morning. >> okay thank you. >> all right. and with that i do have speaker cards if your name is called i see a queue is already here on on the tv side but i will read speaker cards first floor kelly lucas ella, cheryl sinclair, patricia voy thank you sir. >> you can go ahead. thank you. yes. san francisco i know is spanish is spanish fine but look you need to speak english. look, i'm doing my best. i have been doing my best for the 20 years i've been here

speaking. i'm french. well, why should i speak french? okay, never mind it. >> you can't fetch beauty here. >> it doesn't work. you are trying to trap the people according to a plan set up by effect government who wants to get rid of you so very soon we are not going to listen to anything that this fake government is telling us to do in order to show that the game is over. >> a revolution is on peaceful. it's called the revolution by which humanity reconnects itself with this fellow creatures living spaces all included all by drawing basically here first off, nobody almost here in san francisco wants the great highway closed. did you see that's a perfect example you're walking against

the people. second, nobody likes the way most you see 80% at least of san francisco. san franciscans do not like the way moves. >> so what's going on? you know it's you are under pressure now you are in a trap . you don't know how to get out of it. >> you are in big trouble because the trouble is not here to save you. >> the trouble is the fed on the blackmail well, whatever threats it's unfolding at access to this much power you are what you need to get out of here. i'm here to help you. if you don't want to help, you are done. most are not welcome, not recommended. >> at the very least you become a waste of space when you wear a mask nowadays and that's it. >> it's about you don't mess with this guys. you need to address this as well. you don't mess with the weather. >> have a good day. thank you. next speaker hi joel. you're representing the

hopefully still beloved crossing guards. >> i want to thank the management and the board for withdrawing the proposal to eliminate the crossing guard program. i think it was clear from all of the people who spoke here and all the people who signed petitions and sent you those mta board comments i hope you've read them that this is not a good idea and i hope it doesn't surface again. but next year is going to be clear there's going to be more pressure to cut vital programs . you've mentioned you're looking for other funding sources and i hope our union will be able to work with you the supervisors and any other funding sources to keep the program going. to paraphrase bob dylan, we don't need a media ologist to tell us which way the wind is blowing and if you get that bob dylan reference and clearly congestion pricing extending parking meter hours charging for parking in golden gate park ,charging delivery trucks and rideshare vehicles waiting for pickup and charging people

to park in front of their own homes are going to be fiercely opposed. and if you push those, i think some people might vote against some of the proposals you would have on the ballot to try to find more funding. our union leaders met with mayor lurie last week and suggested that the city not renew some of the contracting out programs and not sign new programs that some of these are expensive and wasteful and we think city workers could do that better and more efficiently and at less cost. >> so i hope you will follow the city's lead and try to reduce contracting out. >> use your own staff. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, since everybody was seems to not be according to what was called i'd say decided better get up patricia boy or in your co hall and agree to merchants and pads a week ago last friday we look at the schedule for a hearing

for last monday on the 27th we go to go online it's been taken totally off the record. this is a pattern that we have seen for years with us. >> number two, we tried to get in line cheryl's office called . they said there's not a meeting. the next day came a notification at this bus shuttles yesterday is meeting. we decided to take input and this has just infuriated me in more ways than one. number one. number two, the report for this is show and then they said you have 14 days to give a reply. the report that they were going to give to you is so bogus that i am going to have to do about 30 to 40 days of just research because it's so far off of what really is happening.

>> i'm asking that the over lane on lombard street i can't speak for 19th avenue. the hearing get continued for another month because i have seen multiple deaths over the last year. >> one block short block from my house there's an accident almost every week and it is not in this report and i think that we need to do more better research on what's really happening out there and then instead of just listening just to a report that's just been made i call it token and i want this with julie taking it over i think that we can change the form to be a better facility. >> i will work directly with you. >> thank you. so thank you. next speaker hello, my name is

dr. megan rau. i am the policy director at accomplice compass family services, a resident of bernal heights and i stand before you asking you to not cut the budget for vulnerable people. please do not cut the budget off of the backs of people who can't afford to be able to get their cars out of toll. >> specifically when you take away the cars of people who are living in their vehicles particularly when they are homeless families, you're taking away a safe roof over the top of a child's head. you are taking away their ability to get to and from work. you're limiting the spaces that they can find new housing in because they can't be placed in other cities and counties where they might have to drive back to san francisco for work and you're taking away the ability for people to get their kids to school. but you don't have to believe me. i have the translated spanish testimony of a parent who needs

to be at a parent teacher conference right now. my name is wendy gonzalez and she had her car taken away so she and her family live on the streets now please do not balance the mta budget at the expense of low income community members. cuts to towing discounts for low income people would be devastating for low income community members who rely on their vehicles for work, school and child care. without the discounts, low income people will be forced to choose between paying rent to get there to get their car back or feeding their families. losing a car can tip people into homelessness and for those who are living in their vehicles losing a car and losing is losing a home a form of shelter potentially forcing someone onto the streets. as a mother of a family in a vulnerable situation, i believe that discounts that mta has been granting until now are essential. i've currently seen my community in a difficult situation when having their vehicle towed and it has been satisfactory to know that being low income they have a way to

reduce the costs to be able to get their vehicle. this allows families to be able to cover other necessary expenses in their thank you next speaker. >> good afternoon and happy mardi gras. my name is cheryl sinclair and i'm representing and poverty toes as well as the coalition on homelessness and i'm retired right now but my background is in business development community outreach and i only can guess how devastating a $50 million budget shortfall must be. you have the ability to have a positive change in the lives of so many people. >> and i want to echo dr. megan's comments about don't balance the budget on the backs of those who can least afford it. there's a protest going on

downstairs not about you but about an administration that is trying to do just that as we all know. so thank you and have a heart. >> thank you a few more speaker cards rachel reynolds. bob finebaum. ian james alaina liana binder next speaker hello, i'm lisa platt, a d2 resident today i'm not here to talk to you about my treatment in cadigan but i am going to tell you another story despite having the privilege now of living in very lovely d2i grew up really broke somewhere along the way we started enjoying wine and every once in a while we buy a decent bottle. >> my husband calls this my fancy wine but i never want to drink the fancy wine because the occasion doesn't seem important enough. that's the poor kid in me.

i'm afraid of using it up. >> i like to keep it in the reserves waiting for just the right moment. my husband on the other hand, realizes you'll never know exactly what's to come and that there are other bottles in the reserve so sometimes when i've had a particularly bad day he declares it fancy my night reminding me this moment is important enough to dip into it. we all know the reasons you just cannot cut muni service and we know any debate between funding transit versus bike and roll is a ridiculous conversation because we've all seen our favorite restaurant workers take transit for the long haul and a scooter for the last mile if you cut muni summer service we know it's never coming back. the ghosts of the 4741 and ten are there to remind me daily and i understand it can feel uncomfortable and potentially

irresponsible to use the reserves but today is about enough. today is important enough. we really need you to declare it fancy wine night and use those reserve those reserves to prevent more service cuts please. >> thank you. thank you. >> next speaker hello sfm tea directors my name is orgill you are a resident of the richmond neighborhood. i'm up here today urging you to instead do the summer cuts or decide between cutting programs for low income people or crossing guards to instead fill the 15 million gap using the agency reserve or working with the supervisor as and mayor through a general fund transfer? i understand that the agency is facing tremendous challenges with a $322 million fiscal cliff. i thank the agency thus far to

working hard to balance the budget but i believe we have not considered everything on the table. the agency must also consider parking policy to help fill the deficit and prevent cuts this summer. >> after all we just increased fare prices on transit riders. why should the transit riders be the only people who are suffering from increased costs when losing muni will affect everyone with less people taking muni will mean more people driving which will mean more congestion and higher parking costs if we do not consider everything including parking policy than 15 million from the reserve is the price we must pay. >> i'm also concerned that if we do not try to prevent these cuts while they're still somewhat manageable it will cascade into a doom loop where less service will mean loss of trust and mode shift and loss of trust and mode shift by the public will mean decreased revenues in the future. please delay these cuts for as long as possible so that it

will not only give time for the supervisors and mayor to find a proper solution to this crisis but also help energize people come 2026 when they haven't shifted away and they're still depending on muni. thank you for your hard work and thank you for trying your best during these tumultuous times. >> thanks. thank you. next speaker hi directors. >> my name is lucas ella and i'm here representing the poverty and poverty toes coalition. hopefully not poverty toes. >> i'm here to express my profound disagreement with the proposal by mta staff to cut or further restrict the low income toe discount. >> when i hear of dirt poor people quote unquote abusing a program designed to keep them out of homelessness argument i have unfortunately heard from certain directors and certain mta staff i think of reagan's comment about welfare queens. >> and i really appreciate director kirschbaum meeting

with community stakeholders and talking about deep listening that has not and never occurred for rv communities. the only reason rv communities are ever heard here is because there is community efforts to bring folks out and hopefully convince them that in the time that they are here getting testimony about their lived experience around homelessness and the targeting that they face from parking enforcement in sfpd is to convince them that they're not going to be towed within the couple hours they're at city hall. >> so again, rv communities have said time and time again that the reason that they need these discounts is because they face targeting by those same groups. they don't need them if they don't face targeting. they do not need these discount rates. if we tell our parking enforcement officers and hey, we don't need to be doing that right now and we have no shelters and we have no housing available at the bayview vehicle triage center closed yesterday. gerald commons was just announced last night that it will not have any rv parking.

that means zero safe parking in this city. so i really want us to be conscientious about what this means about pushing people into street homelessness when we're not creating a revenue option. and i just really urge us to remember the humanity of folks living in vehicles and to correct the mistake that was made on october 1st by trying to criminalize their existence in the first place. >> thanks so much. thank you. next speaker for greetings directors. my name is ghulam who say with episcopal community services and with the poverty tools coalition i'm in solidarity with the coalition to request this board not to balance the mta budget on the backs of low income residents. cutting to feed discounts would devastate those who rely on their cars for work, school and child care. without the support many will

face impossible choices like paying rent, feeding their families or reclaiming their vehicle, losing a car or an rv can push people into homelessness. worsening the crisis the mta has other options like reserve funds or increased parking fees. please protect low income san franciscans from slipping into further poverty by keeping these discounts in place. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker hello, i'm flo kelly and i'm with the coalition on homelessness and also the poverty toes coalition. >> so obviously mta has a huge deficit and the city also has a huge deficit. and the mayor's goal is to set up 1500 shelter beds obviously with the idea of having no one on the sidewalk anymore. >> so how do we support

families and single people who are living on the sidewalk? >> the number one solution is prevention. do not tow away people's vehicles that are their shelter, their home and their ability to get to work and if their vehicles are towed and it's too expensive for them to retrieve, where are they living on the sidewalk or they're forced to be in temporary shelters that by the way the city has to pay for very expensive these these shelters. why not just let people park where they're parked honestly and if they get towed and they can't afford to retrieve it, it's devastating. >> the reason i know this is because in the last four days i went out and did outreach to people who live in their vehicles knocking on many doors

and letting them know what the mta is proposing which is to do away with the discounts on towing fees which would be devastating. >> so yes, people who are financially the most vulnerable should not be penalized in order to balance the mta budget . >> thank you. thank you. a few more speaker cards sheeba sarah greenwald marie horrible . >> speaker hello. my name is armando bravo martinez and i am a resident of san francisco. i've been here since i was 18 years old and i went to berkeley so i have had this dual life of of having a very good job, very good shelter, very good home in piedmont and now living in my car and an rv. and i've had both of them towed away.

and if i appreciated the the fact that i could get them out because i was homeless, it was an arduous process but i did it anyway and i appreciate that i can only imagine what it's like if you're a family and have to go through that process and they get told you can't have it because we've done away with that program. that would just be devastating. it's hard enough for a single person who's disabled to do it but to have somebody a whole family go through that process i just can't imagine. so i would say to you, you know, i'm not going to lecture you about balancing the budget on people's backs, but i would say maybe you should not do that in the first place. maybe not target those people in the first place and have a little bit of discussion about having giving them a break in the first place so they don't have to go through that process to begin with. i would think that that would be one way of balancing the budget and maybe look for inefficiencies or reserve.

i don't know that that's up to you but i would say the the process itself is arduous and but the fact that it's there is wonderful. thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name's and still drea. i live next to dolores park and i'm a senior advisor in the office of the san francisco treasurer and tax collector. >> our office worked with the mta in 2017 on the city's fines and fees task force which led to the creation of the low income discounts at the time retrieving a car cost about $600 an amount unaffordable for many san franciscans. about 10% of people never got their car back likely because they could not afford to. we heard testimony from residents like pamela lynette, a disabled senior citizen whose first home ate up half of her social security income.

she paid the fee but then could not make rent and faced eviction. the goal of the low income tow discount is simple to hold people accountable without impoverishing them. it reduces the penalty to $100 for san franciscans receiving medi-cal or snap programs that serve 1 in 4 families in our city. >> even with the discount, a towed car still can cost hundreds of dollars between the ticket and related fees. that's a meaningful penalty but one people can recover from without it. many low income residents will lose their cars making it harder for them to get to work, take their kids to school and cover basic needs rather than making cuts to this low income discount tow program. >> we should look for ways to offset these costs. our office is already working with the s.f. mta to explore efficiencies in processing credit card payments and in

other areas. our assistant treasurer has already reached out to your finance team to discuss this. the treasurer's office has deep expertise in collections and financial justice and we stand ready to support the sfm to during this difficult budget cycle to find solutions that are fair for low income residents and make sense for government. >> thank you. thank you. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon. for general comment i just want to say a couple of things. >> one budget budget budget i hope that we can preserve muni and that we can prevent budget cuts to muni but that means cuts need to come from somewhere and i think there's a massive area that you should be looking at which is obviously the street redesign and things like that. >> i also wanted to comment that people working on a plan

within s.f. mta or under 70 purview should not be showing up and acting as if they are general members of the public and speaking and advocating for that plan. there are plans that are put forth by subcommittees of us of mta and then all those people on that subcommittee show up and act as if they're general members of the public. that really needs to stop and or they at least need to very clearly identify themselves as architects of the plan and not just members of the general public who are speaking. this is this is our opportunity to speak. we only get two minutes. it's kind of unfair if it's taken over by people who are actually lobbying on their own behalf. thank you so much. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello, my name's sarah greenwald, district.

muni's financial problem i wanted to mention really brings home the lesson of today's news about the supreme court ruling in san francisco versus epa. >> if you don't know is san francisco won the epa and the clean water act got a blow from which they may not recover. it's a setback but it teaches a valuable lesson. three of them actually. >> first, san francisco has severely wounded sewage cleanup work nationwide in an attempt to avoid paying because it was expensive to the environment is under deliberate long planned attack by oil billionaires who know what worked on clean water will work on public transit. >> three if we let muni start withering now we will not be able to revive it. the supreme court is going to live for years and their

decisions will hold so i without you know fingerpointing would like us to consider this analogy and consider that what seems to be a perfectly sensible and sort of get away with all cheaper method is out of the question. sorry but thank you. >> next speaker please. >> hi there. my name is ian jones. i'm from i live in taiwan. i just moved from the u turn. um, there is a risk the proposed cuts to muni will become permanent if the 300 million plus dollar deficit isn't addressed as a frontier. we gave less than three weeks to gather public input and the changes can most likely be permanent. and so the three weeks was just not enough time. the 15 million deficit for this

upcoming summer should really come from the reserve or the general fund transfer. it's time to use that special bottle of wine. it's the fairest thing to do for the public and allow 70. to conduct outreach and inform the public on a larger deficit next year. we can backfill the 15 million with revenue options we determine for the rest of the year. everything has to be on the table for this larger deficit that we're all going to suffer from including parking revenue . as many have said today. writers, the working class and other folk low income folks should not bear the brunt of that loss in revenue. smaller cuts now is not going to energize the public to find revenue in the future. personally i've been firing for muni you might have seen the fliers on various stops across the city. i walk from seventh and mission down to the excelsior on the 14

line and from the southern terminus of the nine to sam route and bacon. i talked to dozens of people there already struggling with the cuts that happened this february and i implore you to make sure that doesn't happen even worse in the future. thank you. thank you. >> next speaker. >> hello. i just wanted to thank you for the signs that you've put up around the bus stops that are all in different languages. i thought that was really great to know and to spread the word that things are happening and that you are taking input. i really appreciate that. i am also putting up signs just to help kind of explain more because it just your signs are . >> i do love them but they're a little vague but i also would like to urge you to maybe see

about cutting some of the more tourist oriented ways of getting around that maybe aren't used as much by us locals and our mino. maybe we could just cut them in half like just not as regular but still running. so that was just a suggestion. thank you so much. thank you. next speaker. >> yeah, it's a almost own career correction on home life and i remember one of the commissioners meeting regarding the house the building that burned in 2014 balance here and i remember being shocked about housing equity what can we 13 and it said it applies to people that are working you know it applies to people who

are open up a business how about the homeless? that's categorized into homeless legislation. how about the homeless that don't work because they don't have transportation? the ones that do work how are they going to get to work? i've been to some of the rb meetings that were about the kids how the kids to go to school if they have to park this hard and cannot park at a certain time for a certain time and the poverty call tolls are horrible. i mean there's discrimination in the city. there's this general respect for this economic, social and racial inequality and this is just deepening that who do you think we are? nobody because maybe the spanish people aren't registered to vote. maybe the portuguese people aren't reached out to vote. you cannot take away the little safety cushion they have they're willing to pay to get. >> so i also want tanabe outreach and are those people out there they can register their car. they don't have it the money or

because they can't use their car so why are they going to ghetto lose their home for what ? so we can make this city the international capital of the world we come from money we don't. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hi, my name is dalia quinn. i work with the shelter client advocates happy mardi grass the director henderson i'm just here to speak like other people on the ending poverty truth coalition. i really think that cutting the tooth for low and cutting telling discounts for low income people is just a really terrible idea as so many people have highlighted losing a car can mean losing a home and that can have impacts not just on the people on the shelter system as a whole. look, we already know that the shelter system is overburdened. we also know that reducing street homelessness is a central goal of mayor larry

and of this government. i really think that cutting the towing discount is only going to exacerbate that problem. as people have said, budget struggles should not be offloaded onto our lowest income residents. and i'll tell you a little bit about what i do every single day. i represent people who are kicked out of a shelter and i fight for that. they get a second chance and can come back in and i see how life changing that is for people daily. you know our system is so cutthroat. people aren't used to being being given grace, being used to be given a second chance and when they get that you know sometimes it brings them to tears. they're surprised but most importantly that can be the jumpstart for them to fix their problems, to achieve their goals. and so i really think that this discount for the towing or the towing discount for low income people is a great use of grace and second chances for people. and i really would encourage us not to cut that. >> thank you. thank you.

your next speaker. >> hi directors. my name is hon zager wagner. i'm an s.f. resident and a muni rider. so the federal reserve tells us that 42% of americans can't afford to cover a $500 unplanned expense and i'm just not sure what it is we think that those san franciscans are going to do if we eliminate the auto discount program so the lucky ones they'll get their bill vehicles back. but in the process as we've already heard from many other speakers, they're going to slide more deeply into economic precarity for our neighbors who are virtually housed. >> it may in fact put them onto the streets and this is real i've talked to people who've had that exact same thing happen to them. you know, in a nation whose current political climate is increasingly defined by taking from the poor to give ever more to the rich, i hope that you'll join me in keeping to what i believe our city's values are. there are many other less regressive proposals for addressing sfm today's budget issues on the table and while

there can be reasonable debate about what to do next, i'm quite sure the solution is not cutting low income top programs and it's not cutting bus routes either. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker hello directors. my name is sheeba i'm policy associated glide and our center for social justice and a member of the end poverty choice coalition. i'm here to urge you all to reconsider cutting the discount program as one of the ways to fill empty is budget shortfall. as many of you are aware, these discount programs not only support those with financial hardships but they also provide an essential lifeline to individuals on the verge of experiencing street homelessness. last year we came to this board urging you all to be innovative and creative and to work with community on solutions that will alleviate the suffering of those constantly swept from street to street with nowhere else to go today i'm here calling you and especially directors who are appointed to these seats to stand up for community for the most marginalized and over burdened

with empty is inequitable approach to ticketing, towing and fee charges that lead people more into debt towing an individual's only mode of transportation to and from work or school can be incredibly devastating especially when those individuals do not have a financial safety net like this discount program. we are very rich city with an ample supply of resources but for some reason resources like this tow discount program that are intentionally created to pull people out of poverty are always on the chopping block. we should be we should not be making budgets visions that force people to choose between paying their rent, feeding their families or getting their vehicles out of a toy yard for nearly $700 which is the highest surcharge in the whole country since the summer of 2024 mta staff has presented to you all a number of solutions that you can use to fill the budget for example using funds from the mta reserves and increasing parking meter

charges in well-to-do neighborhoods in the city. therefore we respectfully do not accept these this budget option because it will create more harm than good. a $3 million cut to this program will not only fill the fiscal deficit, it is yet another attempt to balance the budget of working people. >> thank you. thank you. >> i'll read more speaker cards oscar is less melody patricia carlin nicolas party but hello commissioners my name is ian james. i am the community engagement manager at the glide center for social justice a member of the end poverty toad's coalition. i'm here to ask you to reject any cuts to the low income toe discount without discounts receiving your vehicle after tow costs over $600 and is often hundreds of dollars more at glide. we know how unrealistic it is to expect working class and low income people to be able to

afford that price and to ever recover their vehicles if this discount program is cut, vehicles will sit unclaimed racking up expenses for the asset mta while their owners are unable to get to work school or crucial services like our own. and it is exactly that type of large unexpected expense that pushes people and families into homelessness. we know that the city is facing a significant budget deficit but the budget cannot be balanced on the backs of the poor san franciscans. if the s.f. mta cannot afford these tows then why would we expect the low income san franciscans to be able to to get this simple effective part of our city's safety net will cost as an unclaimed vehicles in housing insecurity and in disconnection from other services much more than it would save. >> thank you. thank you. >> next speaker hello directors and director kersh fong. congratulations on your new

role. my name is eliana and i'm the policy director for glide and a member of the poverty toes coalition. >> as you have heard, we are here in opposition to the proposal to eliminate and reduce low income tax subsidies. eliminating or reducing these subsidies will worsen economic equity in our city and contribute to the destabilization of low income families. without these important discounts, thousands of san franciscans teetering on the edge of extreme poverty and housing instability could be pushed into the abyss of job loss, eviction and homelessness due to not being able to recover a towed vehicle. we recognize that there is of mta is facing a very challenging financial situation . yet these proposed cuts could create serious harm for relatively little savings. >> there's a broader issue here with mta's towing contract and the fact that the mta loses money on the towing program overall in part due to this

towing contract which is up for rfp this year. san francisco has the highest towing costs in the country in the first four hours after a vehicle is towed it costs $657 to retrieve a towed vehicle. the full cost can easily rise to $1,000 after several days. by comparison, new york city has a total fee of $185. them to de prioritize poverty tows such as tows for vehicles that have been parked in the same spot for 72 hours or for expired registration. the mta could actually save money by having more people actually pay to retrieve the vehicles by prioritizing vehicles whose owners could pay for thousands of san franciscans paying 650 to $1000 to retrieve their car is simply impossible. people earning less than 200% of the federal poverty level or receiving public benefits are eligible for these discounts. that means about 200,000 san franciscans are eligible

and tens of thousands have benefited from the dis. thank you. thank you. >> next speaker please. >> hi. my name's tricia. >> i just want to say prioritize programs. what are the most important things for people to get around? be safe. okay. >> making basic programs you have work is what you do when money's tight. right. >> so why don't you do that and turn up terrible for the last several years. is a problem. it's problem for drivers and for businesses. eliminate parking is also a problem for small businesses. profligate spending on concrete structures up and down travel and all over the place. >> it's like money, money, money. that's all i see. it's terrible. >> it's bad for the climate and expensive and makes driving

more dangerous for drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists. >> so you know, just do a little prioritizing and make what you're doing work so people appreciate you and are safe in the city. >> so zero vision or vision zero is zero vision. >> it's it's really bad cutting all these streets off and all this business. >> all right. thanks. thank you. your next speaker. >> hello, my name is melody. i've been coming to this podium since 2009 requesting that you please stop taking away our parking where we live. >> um. i shouldn't have to tell you my story all over because it's just every time i come here there's all new people and i've been telling my story since

2009. >> the most recent thing that happened is that in 2023 during the h soc sweeps i got swept from where i was safe and now my rv has been in a nest of drug addicts and high crime. and on january 19th i came back to the camper and it had been gutted from ceiling to floor and all the wires ripped out and everything that i own all of my legal documents, all my medical records or on the ground. and then we got swept again and then everything i own has been arraigned on it since.

>> i'm here to ask you to please stop. >> please don't take away these discounts that we desperately need. >> i'm begging you. for the millionth time. i've been coming here since 2009. please stop. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker i i director is dylan fabris with san francisco transit riders and a member of the meeting nominee forever campaign. i'm here to ask you to use your reserves to fill the $15 million instead of implementing harmful muni service cuts or program cuts. we can't be pitting public transit service against important services like crossing guards and and low

income residents people who are living in their cars. instead the board needs to lead with its values. now is the time to dip into the reserves. it's an emergency and i understand the severity of the upcoming deficit next year. $322 million that's a lot of money but it has a bigger impact if you use it now. it's $140 million in reserve. you can't use that to fill the deficit next year. but what you can't do is use a fraction of that money now pause the service cuts and spend the next several months leading up to those bigger cuts to find solutions that work for the that work for the community and can fund muni. and if we have to find the service cuts that that actually work the timeline right now is really short and we just need a longer runway to to lead up to these cuts.

so yeah i urge you use the 15 million dollars in reserves to to stop the cuts and let's work together to find those solutions for the medium and long term success of the agency. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. yes, my name is oscar. i was born in san francisco and a disabled veteran. and what the city has become disgusts me. and said here he cuts. i would like to hear revenue solution which i do have but getting a hold of the mayor with those solutions has become impossible for me. and i haven't been up here since the 70s. so for me to come back here is a lot because i find being here is a waste of time.

but i'm here and i'm hoping i can get in touch with someone with authority where i can present my solutions. because when the times were good we didn't start cutting everything scrapping everything. it was your investments bad investments that cost the city to not afford for the needy and the homeless. and this is disgusting to me. i don't hear one solution for revenue that one. >> all i hear is cuts. and another thing i wanted to bring up was in the old days when i was a child street opera riders they had two conductors. we have that on the cable car but we don't have that on the metro where we could at least enforce payment. i've been on the train in the mornings going to the doctor appointments even in the working class. i make a lot of money downtown don't pay their fair share.

it's not enforced. drivers just want to drive their vehicle. they don't even want to put a disabled chair down for the disabled or never even lift a finger. oh but they say someone you're on the yellow line. i know i've been kicked off the bus twice. >> and i also know their drivers have a good gripe because a driver got rolled up for being someone beat out the yellow light. so you know what is it going to end? you need to get the revenue solutions first then think about cutting and not cutting the poor. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> hello as of the mta board. good afternoon. i'm here for general comment regarding slow streets. so i do as much walking as i do driving and i've come to a conclusion through observation. >> well, it's been about an hour but then about five years

since the slow streets program was implemented ostensibly for people to have space to recreate while alleviating stress and fear of catching covid while outdoors slow streets is now an anachronism and many are impeding traffic flow. many of these designated slow streets are not even utilized by walkers and strollers anymore. that's my observation. >> they also present some safety issues for drivers. for example, when a cart is turning right on to a slow street and another car is at the intersection, the right hand turns completely blocked by the slow street sign. >> it's really unsafe. >> it's just really hard for a car to turn right without having to go into the wrong side of the street. and i know you guys are about safety so i think it's time to reconsider that some of these slow streets are fine. they're here to stay. a lot of them could go. i think it's time to reassess that there was too many of

them. eliminate those that are wholly underused and then maybe just install speed bumps and 20mph signs. i don't know. but slowing down is fine. it's good but maintaining an unsafe signage on these so called slow streets is not. and finally after listening to everybody i would like to also express that the towing and storage fees for cars is outrageous. with san francisco even thinking it's unfair, it ought to be dropped to 100 bucks for all cars. everyone let's be equitable and stop extracting money from the people and just start to shrink your own bureaucratic waste. thanks a lot. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello. i'm a muni operator tenderloin resident. and i just want to say that it's my understanding that at the next board meeting the agency's bringing this summer service cut budget proposal.

and march 18th also happens to be from my understanding transit operator appreciation day. and i just want to say that operators will not be used as props for summer service. budget cuts. transit operators meaning operators won't be used as props to put people living in their cars out onto the street. we support the public good that is muni but this public good continues to be treated as you know something that is gutted just like the the billionaire agenda of the trump administration. i don't see how this is this is any different. the agency talks about paying people paying their fair shares. guilt tripping people who don't pay for fares or guilt tripping people for not paying for parking. >> and the people who really are paying their fair share are the billionaires in san francisco. >> and that's why many cuts are

on the table. that's why as of usd it's threatening mass layoffs. that's why we need to be talking about. i just want to give credit to the operators for their safety as was talked about earlier because for example i did a tour of duty on the our busses and the owl operators our babysitters for people with severe mental health issues, behavioral issues on the our busses, our homeless shelters essentially because the city doesn't do anything to eradicate poverty. the city wages war on invisible poverty. the operators are with the people and we will continue to be. >> thank you. thank you. i'll read a few more speaker cards. >> sorry vijay your york and people sin. go ahead. good afternoon. my name is tommy viloria. i'm with san francisco transit

riders muni now muni forever campaign. as always we are pushing the mta board to take the 15 million from the reserves. 15 million no service or program cuts. >> 15 million is the cost of not getting enough revenue from parking. if we don't want to put that on the table well that's the price we have to pay and we shouldn't we shouldn't get this from the backs of riders low income people, homeless folks and even the crossing guards. we cannot allow service cuts that can become permanent. that 15 million is a price to pay in order to give sfm a breathing room to continue and maintain service while also allowing it to do proper and longer community outreach under larger cuts starting next year. people are more likely to vote for services that they are about to lose than services that they don't have any service cuts threaten losing people's votes. if we're pushing for a ballot measure this year to fund services we need, every vote is

possible. so let's use that 15 million. we won't have to do all this long public comments it shouldn't be on the backs of people that needs it the most. i know i appreciate the fiscal responsibility but we're also in a state right now where riders are continually growing. doesn't make any sense to cut the services that they have now that will become permanent. let's use this year to create that. >> get people to find revenue measures and if people doesn't feel like they want to fund transit then we'll have the hard conversation next year. we can backfill that 15 million. just add that to a 322 million. that deficit grew from 100 to 322. so what's another 15 million? so let's work together. get it from the reserves. no program or service cuts. >> thank you. thank you. i would like to announce if we have any members of the public in our overflow room that want to provide public comment at this time for general public comment. you are welcome to make your

way upstairs to provide that comment. >> next speaker. good afternoon board my name is cyrus hall arizona 87. i stand here in solidarity with the end poverty coast coalition with this crossing guards with low income residents in this city. and i want to encourage you to move money from the reserve 15 million to cover the cuts rather than cutting programs. i understand that that is not a fiscal easy decision to make that we face a $322 million deficit the year after. >> i understand there's no solution to that $322 million deficit that unfortunately our leaders in the city have not yet presented a plan that our leaders at the regional level have not presented a plan and that our leaders at the state level have not accepted a plan. but we need more time and i do not want to see that time not by more people ending up completely homeless living in an rv as homelessness. but at least you have a roof

over your head. i don't want to see that bought by kids being hit as they go to school because there isn't a crossing guard to keep them safe. we're in an emergency. the reserves are four an emergency. the emergency happened four years ago in the form of covid economically destroying the structure of funding for this agency. we're in the middle of the emergency now. >> now that's the exogenous event that the reserve was built for. >> there will be more exogenous events because of our leadership in washington, d.c. over the next two years. but they're all sort of part of the same unrolling emergency on this country that started four years ago. >> thank you very much. thank you. next speaker. >> well, i'm fine, bill. on behalf of the saved muni. i want to let you know that we are fully supportive of taking

15 million or whatever the amount would need to be out of the reserves to cover the short term. one year budget deficit of the s.f. mta. however, as everybody knows we're facing a looming fiscal cliff. right now we do not have the report of the budget working group that's going to be coming i believe at the end of this month. i suspect that the budget working group is going to say that we need to backfill a lot of that $322 million deficit with money raised from the public that is in the form of some kind of ballot measure. that's plan a, there ain't no plan b except to cut muni service. save muni will be presenting you with a plan b shortly.

that plan b is going to be painful but it will allow us to maintain full muni service. >> watch for it. thank you. thank you. >> next speaker. >> oh thank you. pete wilson resident district five. i just thank you julie. big props for the the signs in chinese. mike i'm glad you came back as a muni operator. i can tell you it's very frustrating. no signs for me. when has all that information that somebody's standing there and trying to read and figure out as somebody who has driven the one california many times if it just said presidio guy you know it's turning out in chinese characters people would understand. but we get there and we have to kick people off. there's this a heat up excuse me sums up you guy. >> then they know that it's going all the way. so thank you. whoever help whatever help you

need without julie, that's going to be amazing. thank you for that. as far as money goes, two thirds of the suspensions that were given to muni operators last year were overturned and people got paid. yeah, it's only $100,000 between friends but people were paid for days not working. >> that's one way we could save money. i'm about to send an email in the next week to shayna dines to move 15 cases to full full arbitration because david garcia refuses to permit expedited arbitration. that's a way that these contract grievances that we could be saving money and somebody said something that i thought was great. what if we charged a dollar on each package that came came in to san francisco? i don't care who you're getting it from uber eats or if you're getting it from amazon could we charge them because those people are blocking the streets. i try and buy my stuff locally but every once in a while it's something impossible to find and we go online and we order it. >> but what if we could charge those people for that delivery ? >> some people might say oh i can't pay the $5 a month forget

deliveries then go out and shop local. >> i think that would be great and thank you for the san francisco bike coalition 25 year member but i haven't paid since 22 because i don't i send me a bill and i would love to pay for that for the bike coalition. >> i'm a huge bike rider. okay the vacation. please, please, please let people sign up for vacation. some of us don't have kids at san francisco unified school district. >> some of us don't. >> so let's have the bajwa think about the pro patriots for a minute. they want to go on vacation with their families. >> let them sign up for vacations. okay. >> i got spring break next week for my kid. but not everybody gets to do that. >> so please are recording songs. >> don't be cruel. elvis elvis presley. time is up. thank you. next speaker hello, my name is mya chaffey. i'm here as a low income resident of san francisco whose

car free i'm dependent on public transit to get around the city and to commute to my job. i'm lucky that i live in such a transit dense part of the mission which give me the freedom to get where i need to go. i wish i was here fighting for better transit whether that was for reliability on the 22 fillmore or more service on the 49 to prevent overcrowding or maybe bringing back the ten townsend. however, the current conditions require i come here to urge you to have do no cuts to service or programs this summer. we none of us should be at each other's throats over this if s.f. mta is unwilling to consider other funding measures like paid sunday parking which i will remind you i still have to pay my fare on sundays. then the board must move the money from the reserve or general fund to cover the deficit. i want s.f. mta to be able to spend the next year talking to people about the larger deficit . well advocates like myself can do things like flier bus routes and knock doors to fight for more funding. >> the board is should be very

aware that muni has record high rider satisfaction. >> so don't break that trust with your riders now. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. hello my name is richard schwann. >> i am a san francisco mta transit operator. i'm also a resident of the soma, a parent of a s.f. usd yeah, fourth grader who goes to school at daniel webster elementary school in potrero hill. >> the main line that we use to get her to school every day the 55 is up for cut. yeah. that neighborhood does not have other effective transit to get up to the top of that hill easily. so please reconsider cutting and making any service cuts to to our lines. additionally i want to speak up for the 2000 plus transit operators who have not been able to take a vacation yet

this year where we're in march now vacation signups going into april are going it's going to be a quarter of the year. the majority of us have not been able to take a vacation because you're giving us days notice in order to apply to sign up for these vacations rather than honoring the contract that you all signed with us that stated that we should have one annual sign up in january. that goes for the entire year. operators cannot if they can't buy airfare they can't get there their travel accommodations in their lodgings set up their spouses are furious because they can't coordinate their schedules and time off requests with their jobs. >> our children are upset because they are not going to get to see grandma and grandpa and do all of the things that they should be able to do every year. and on top of that we are already burnt out. we're dealing with so many

different issues on a daily basis and not being able to take a break from that hurts everyone. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. rectors. >> hello. my name is al ackerman. i've lived in the richmond district for the last 45 years and like everyone in sanford cisco i have felt the the seismic shifts and the moving of great tectonic economic plates nationally. >> we though we may feel we have this $322 million deficit. and here's a thing we can grapple with and it's a tangible figure. we're not so certain of how things are going to play out on some of the subsidies which we may get from the federal government. and so that's why i would ask for fiscal prudence now for

belt tightening where we can for trying not to balance other things on the backs of people where we would really not like to do that but to take on the infrastructure culture of the new bike and roll plan adds one more cost great cost to implement it, great cost to maintain it and this is at a time where allocating new funds it may not be the most fiscally prudent thing to do at this time. not saying you don't need a crystal ball to see that changes in how we get around these things. we need to be more accommodating. but to take on something this big that has this many budget uncertainties and at a time where city services are challenged to maintain the infrastructure that we have well let's take on something new at an unknown cost where we

are also uncertain of funds. we'll have to supplement really important programs. thank you. thank you. your next speaker griffin lee again district two resident while i empathize with the majority of people here on what they stated, i would one say do not rely on the reserves for the $50 million shortfall coming up. >> the reason why is i'm looking toward the future and i encourage you to as well. >> the reserves are i think roughly $100 million are more likely going to need needed to be used for the bigger deficit you're all facing in 2026. >> this is not on the residents of san francisco. >> this is on you and the irresponsible spending within the mta. secondly, if you're relying on a ballot measure in 2026, please note i believe two of the last three ballot measures regarding transit have lost.

>> secondly, you're more likely going to be faced competing with a housing bond measure that didn't even make it on the ballot in 2024. >> think about continuing to transfer capital potentially capital expenditures and using that as a way to cut the shortfall that i don't think while i don't think that will affect potential cuts for muni which again i empathize with everyone here i'm a muni rider myself but do not put this on the backs of the public. >> otherwise you're going to continue to lose our trust. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon commissioners. my name is three more general argument and i'm a sunset resident and i do not have a car and a lot of sunset

residents actually don't drive especially seniors. the muni lines due to sunset are great and many of them have high ridership like the and you altair of our seven 2829 and you other than probably forgot to mention but i hope you find the right balance between like reducing services during quiet times of the today and also maintaining the essential service during the morning and evening commute times whether it's for workers or students or whenever people need to go to make sure they can get where they're going and also to consider extending parking meter time to right that makes sense. i mean there are several blocks where parking is free on weekends and so there's no parking and cars are just circling around like maybe you could charge something to get some revenue and people would actually find it easier to park there. >> so yeah, i think you thank you. i'm seeing no other speakers in the room but i do want to announce just for our overflow room folks if we have any one

second if we have any members of the public in the overflow room downstairs i want to that want to provide general public comment. and item number nine you can make your way up to room 400 to provide that comment. >> go ahead, sir. yeah, my name is david joe. i live in district 11. i take muni for light rail most of the time and i notice that the shuttle is completely empty all the time. i was wondering if that's a line that could be cut to save money. that would be a minor thing to do but it's one of those things that delay the other lines and have very low ridership. >> thank you. thank you. >> no other speakers in the room. we do have one accommodation request speaker you've been unmuted. >> you have two minutes for general public comment. >> yeah. this is herbert weiner. now one concern i have when you say transit first public transit station is the first on the chopping block. secondly, the board and chair

and general really it's not for the public. i'm a native san franciscan. how many members of the board are native san franciscans? we know the community in ways that planners and members of the board don't know and also what about motorists and having a seat at the table? motorists really don't need a hatchet and if you don't listen to muggers for revenge they were responsible. the march of the previous executive director. so you will have to listen to the public and not spend money on an outlandish project that stable set the vision zero and the lynch project really you can make and they don't

have to be in public transportation little really need public transportation in the face of the manmade or natural disaster. so it's time to really listen to the public and not the nonprofit corporations like bicycle coalition. >> thank you. thank you. >> i have no other speakers. we will now close public comment. >> secretary silva please call the next item. >> very good that places you on item number 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 board or 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 approving two roadway shared spaces street closure applications by local restaurants four mark lane between bus street and harlan

place. tuesday, april 1st, 2025 through tuesday march 31st, 2020 6:11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily and via bufano from columbus avenue to 75ft northerly sunday, march 23rd, 2025 through sunday march 22nd 2020 6:04 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. each tuesday through thursday 4 p.m. to midnight each friday 1 p.m. to midnight each saturday and 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. each sunday. and making environmental review findings. item 10.2 authorizing the director of transportation to execute contract modification number two two contract number 1307 divide feeder circuit carl 11 with jesse seems doing business as gear on construction for noncompliance all day delays to the construction of a new traction power electrical circuit and the installation of new switch equipment along church street between market street and the box avenue increasing the term of the contract by 1471 days to the actual substantial completion date of

june 11th, 2023 and for a reduced scope and bid item final quantity adjustments decreasing the contract amount by approximately $25,000 bringing the final contractor amount to approximately $1.5 million item 10.3 authorizing the director of transportation option to execute contract modification number two two contract number 131 for replacement of manual trolley switch system phase one with g g c. s doing business as gear on construction for non compensable delays to traction power cable work and fiber optic cable connection work increasing the contract term by 1425 days to the actual subsequent substantial completion date of march 11th, 2024 and for a reduced scope and bid item final quantity adjustments decreasing the contract amount by approximately $562,000 bringing the final contract amount to approximately $2.6 million and item 10.4 amending the memorandum of understanding between the san francisco

between the s.f. mta and the transport workers union local 250 a49163 transit operators to add a ci letter concerning inconvenience pay to be effective june 19th, 2027. >> that concludes your consent calendar. >> thank you secretary silva. we will now open public comment for item ten the consent calendar. in the interest of time and because it's my understanding there are many people waiting to make public public comment on the next item i'm going to allow for one minute each for public comment on the consent calendar. >> thank you. very good. members of the public wishing to provide comment will have one minute. there will be a warning sound at 30s and a time when the time is up any speakers can come up to the podium at this time. >> this is again for the consent calendar. >> hi. i just wanted to say i really object to a year long really

erratic set of street closures to be decided on the consent calendar. i don't think that's appropriate and i think that should be pulled off and discussed at another time. >> thank you. thank you. any other speakers? seeing none i believe i heard a request to pull one of the items off of the consent calendar but i'm unclear which one. >> one item 10.1. >> you may. yes, we can sever that item. i'm not sure that stuff is here but they should be to speak to the item. this is for the roadway shared space closures. >> should we approve that or

should we vote on the the remainder of the consent calendar and then we can hear the item 10.1 separately? >> yes. let's see that and i can move the balance of the consent calendar by this time we would second thank you, secretary silva. >> please call the roll on the motion to approve the consent calendar with 10.17 director chen i shan i director henderson henderson i director lindsay i director coquina i you i chair tarlov i tarlov i think you that consent calendar is approved bringing us back to item 10.1 approving two roadway shared spaces street closures for mark lane and via bufano i believe staff is present yes good afternoon directors bryant

wu senior traffic engineer of empty streets division i have the responsibility to chair the escort meetings and these two proposed street closures were heard at this court back in january and due to the frequency number of days and number of hours for each of these two closures they require approval by the mta board which is why they are on our agenda today. as far as the street closures themselves, these are two restaurants that have been closing two alleys via bufano and the other at and mark lane one of them is in downtown off of bush street. the other is in north beach and specifically the one at mark lane. we received no objections and the irish bank has been doing this closure for years. the other item is viable for

now it's in the north beach area and we started that closure during the pandemic at the start of the pandemic. we admit that the closure itself created a little bit of inconvenience particularly for the neighbors because the original shared space closure had overlapped with a neighboring market that occurred every month in the north beach area. likewise because it's an alley it cut off neighborhood access from one end of the alley. likewise there was a tables and chairs and noise complaints on the issue but over the years that the program has continued we have scaled back several elements to address those type of concerns on via bufano specifically the hours do not overlap with any other street

closures in the area to ensure that the residents have access to their properties and their driveways at all times. in fact the closure footprint itself does not block or obstruct any driveway at all. to address noise the applicant will not be applying for any entertainment commission permits for any amplified sound. and lastly, concerns in the past about emergency access and what have you have been addressed two ways. one to ensure that there is no overlap with any other adjacent street closures and also by a thorough review at escort by our fire department representatives to ensure that any tables and chairs that are installed on site are easily removable per the fire department to ensure a path of travel even if the other end of the alley is obstructed by something else. so it is for these reasons that we felt that the neighborhood

concerns have been addressed and as i had mentioned past concerns obviously set probably a bad tone for the neighbors on bufano. but the other closure obviously for the irish bank had no objections whatsoever and we felt that for via bufano that these concerns have been addressed and that the closure has been going on for years and so we recommended a another year for this permit. thank you. we should have public comment and then the and then the directors will be invited. >> thank you. >> public comment? yes. okay. the comment that members of the public wishing to provide a comment and i and everyone patricia boyer pardon me, ma'am sorry i'm sorry. it's my fault. i'm i'm a little slow here. we'll have one minute each for public comment on on this item.

>> thank you, ma'am. one second please. i just need to set the timer. okay, go ahead. >> i hadn't planned on speaking on this but the one thing he didn't say is how he did his outreach to the neighbors and this has been one of the endemic problems with this problem with this department and i think that we should look into this in the future because we're getting a i call it a department that is just deciding what they do doing and then they say it's okay. but then the public finds out after the fact. thank you. thank you. next speaker this is for item 10.1. >> cnn. thank you directors. >> do you have questions? director henderson? >> i have a process question.

does the vehicle code that is used to make these street closures does that limit the amount of time to one year that each application can seek or are there extended periods because for an application i just wonder if there's a way to have a longer period for applications that have not had any community you know negative community feedback over multiple years. >> the shared space is legislation limited to a max of one year. >> one year. okay, that's very good. thank you. and then my other question was i remember a viable final coming up last year in front of us. and so i just want to be clear the feedback that you received since that last application approval and since you know over the past year you feel success for you the team has

successfully responded to that feedback that you received from the public and or were you mentioned when you said you've incorporated that feedback into this proposal? is that because there were like comments that were negative at the hearing? >> so the comments that we received this year at january's ascot which is after the outreach to the neighbors mirrored the comments from last year. >> got it. okay. and but we also felt that per those per the feedback that we had gotten that the applicant had had adequately addressed those concerns which is why we recommended that it go forward to the board today. >> thank you. i remember from last year that there was some desire to have the applicant be more responsive to the community and so i appreciate that that was completed successfully. thank you.

thank you. >> it's my understanding that this this particular these both of these items are the intention is to support these two small businesses is that is that a fair characterization? >> yes, that's correct. okay. that's my only question. thank you. director chin, did you know i was ready to make a motion but oh yes. >> may i have a motion and move to approve item 10.1 second. >> secretary silva, please call the roll on the motion to approve item 10.1 director chen chennai director henderson henderson i director hindi i nci director casino you know i charter love i tala vi. thank you that item is

approved. >> thank you. thank you. thank you secretary silva please call the next item. >> director is that places you want item number 11 adopting san francisco's biking and rolling plan to guide biking and rolling policies programs and establishing the northstar network for people using human powered and low speed devices in alignment with san francisco's transit first policy vision zero policy climate action plan and racial and racial equity action plan. supporting and memorializing the actions and goals of the community action plans and supporting exploration of active transportation actions. >> good afternoon. hello. am i a small i'm planning director and as of mta it's nice to see you chair tarlov vice chair gina and directors as we have returned today with a recommendation to adopt the biking and rolling plan after almost three years of listening learning and building the plan you see before you. >> we've learned how much mta's bikeway projects since the last plan get used and have improved

and protected people's lives and how many more people want to use a safe and connected network of bike ways? we've learned how the communities of biking and rolling have expanded in the last 15 years. >> the number one people bike reason people bike enroll now is to run errands. it lets them move through the city at their own pace free from congestion and confine rides going door to door. >> we've also learned how to build trust. >> people have been in this room and sit at this podium with us that have never perhaps trusted us before and there are many people not in this room as well because they trust us. >> creating this plan has helped the city think comprehensively about improvements to all forms of transportation and at this milestone today this plan meets this moment. it balances this mode in with taking transit, walking and driving. >> so christy osorio, our project manager will talk more in detail about specifically what the plan is seeking for an

adoption the specific pieces within it. but i just want to recognize that kind of at a higher level. >> adopting this plan is above all an endorsement of this process. it is a commitment to the transparent and c to history and the community that this team has built and it is an acknowledgment that biking and rolling belongs as one of the ways we get around in san francisco. so i know that it's a tough time. >> it's really hard to talk about things as we look way into the future and we're talking about the next generation at the same time where we're facing such a fiscal challenge and understanding the complexity of that moment is really, really difficult. so we want to be really clear about what this plan includes and what it does not do as well. >> this may not be the time to commit to specific timeframes projects and the use of specific resources in the immediacy. >> so while this plan guides where we might do projects in the future, it does not approve a specific set of projects.

>> it does not approve any projects. projects will each go through a process including future mta board approval. approving this plan does not commit us to spending any money and even when we propose future bikeways they will not compete with muni funding. this is really important especially right now as i understand the context that we're in bikeway projects are almost entirely funded by outside grants or funding that can't be used for anything else. it actually grows the resources that we have and it might even help protect some of the street repair we have to do in the future. >> and finally the plan is not a way to restrict driving and does not propose taking cars off any roadways in san francisco. >> so this is where we are together we have made an imperfect but clear roadmap that can guide but does not mandate future bikeway decisions that may come before you. so i am more than honored to introduce now christy osorio, the project manager for bike nearly.

>> good afternoon board members. my name is christy ossorio. i'm the project manager of the biking and rolling plan. so today you are voting on whether to adopt san francisco's biking and rolling plan. i will be presenting an executive summary of this plan along with an overview of funding and how schools will be connected to the network. >> next slide. >> so specifically the plan approves a set of goals, policies and actions that helps the city think comprehensively about improvements to the transportation system a north star network that provides a long range road map to a safe and connected biking and rolling network within a quarter mile of everyone and a set of community action plans that gives the agency a new way of working with historically underserved communities to repair past harms. >> the plan before you today is a culmination of two years of outreach and analysis where we sought to understand how people are moving around today and what the existing conditions of biking and rolling are so that we may improve on them as we plan for

the future. >> we've brought you and the public along this journey checking in at key milestones and have iterated based on the feedback that we've heard and we're grateful to both yours and the public's input. >> so san francisco's biking and rolling plan is designed to promote active transportation and greater use of the biking and rolling network by improving access to schools, parks, jobs and vital services. >> and having a plan for biking and rolling improves the whole transportation system by providing safe and reliable options for getting around that people can confidently and reliably choose. this plan is also in alignment with city wide policies including san francisco's transit first policy adopted in 1973. the transportation element in the city's general plan our better streets policy the vision zero policy, the climate action plan and our racial equity framework. >> the biking rolling plan is different from previous plans in that it's designed for users

historically left out of bicycle planning. they are students, families and caregivers people who are very young and small and often making trips with multiple people on one device. >> there are people with disabilities who are especially vulnerable on the road. we've heard from many seniors say that they used to ride a bike but don't anymore because they don't feel safe enough to do it. and people living in equity priority communities who are who are at risk on the road due to disinvestment in infrastructure or working class traveling outside of 9 to 5 commute hours. >> this plan puts people of all ages and abilities at the center. >> the plan also focuses on different trips. historically planning has brought people to the center of downtown focusing on super commuters. we know from bike share data that people are riding around more locally and for errands. lastly, the biking and rolling plan seeks to repair past harms

in areas of the city where previous construction or redevelopment projects or planning efforts excluded indigenous black and brown communities that caused that caused lasting damage and reduced quality of life in the tenderloin. >> western addition fillmore soma mission excelsior and bayview hunters point we present community led action plans that offer a new way of working together. >> so the technical analysis first presented to the board in august of 2023 includes bicycle network conditions index a bike count analysis equity analysis and network connectivity analysis. the findings from these analyzes supports the northstar network presented before you. and what we learned is that bicycle and scooter ridership has bounced back to pre-pandemic levels and is concentrated in neighborhoods. >> thus the emphasis on local trips and neighborhood connectivity. we also know that the number of trucks increase whenever a quick build is implemented

hence the need for closing gaps and making upgrades on the existing network. and lastly, we know that 80% of san franciscans are interested in biking and rolling but only 23% of them feel safe enough to do it. we've heard that to feel safer people need improvements like traffic calming, slower vehicle speeds on shared roadways or separation on arterials. >> we've also done an extensive amount of outreach over the past two years, rolled out in phases with specific objectives . >> during phase one we sought to inform the public about the planning process. this phase also included consultation by forming working groups comprised of subject matter experts in transportation policy and in small business. phase two set out to understand the needs and challenges of residents. during this phase we developed a resident preference survey that received over a thousand survey responses where we learned about what people need to feel safe. >> and during the last phase of outreach we sought direct feedback on the drafts of the

plan policies programs in the network. we hosted ten city wide open houses and received over 900 written responses that we took into consideration in developing the first draft of the plan. >> so in all we had five informational board hearings. over 250 community table events and presentations. over 2000 survey responses. ten open houses with over 900 written responses and countless conversations and email exchanges. >> the plan includes five goals with the set object objectives ,policies and actions by which to achieve them. >> goal one is putting people first. so the plan aims to make biking and rolling safe to increase fairness and lower harm especially for those who experience greater risk on the street. goal two is setting a north star. the plan recognizes that it is as an essential choice for people in san francisco. the city must plan for a complete well connected and safe bike and rolling network. >> the northstar network is

defined as all ages and abilities facilities within a quarter mile of san franciscans. goal three is serving local needs. the plan seeks to design active transportation to serve local needs while being mindful of vulnerable communities and neighborhoods. >> goal number four. delivering the plan the plan sets a goal to be accountable to communities and deliver the northstar network by stewarding the plan is a living document delivered in stages. recognizing that the city needs to expand resources, recognize community readiness and manage unique technical challenges. >> and goal number five is resourcing people by providing programs, resources and assets that invite and support people especially youth and low income residents and workers to use the network. so programs such as safe device parking education programs and incentives. >> the plan includes an annotated northstar network. these are where the bikeways will be and what kind of

facilities we're talking we're thinking about. it presents a safe and connected network within a quarter mile of everyone and acknowledges the work that needs to be done to get there. >> it serves as a reference guide for the mta and the public to know where transportation improvements will happen. >> and just a reminder it does not include any proposals to close it to close additional streets and does not propose any future bike lanes on merchant corridors in the community partner neighborhoods. >> it includes a note to reference the community action plans so that we remain accountable to the planning processes that they lead. >> the plan includes a set of over 100 active transportation actions within the scope of the biking rolling plan that we're committed to exploring in a prioritized thing by working with the community groups and exploring these actions we identified new ways of working together and setting a path towards repairing past harms. delivering on these actions aren't transactional. rather their foundations for trust building. therefore what we're also

committed to working with the community groups to formalize a process for exploring the actions and checking in on their progress. >> so now i want to talk a little bit about funding because it's important to talk about how bikeways are funded in san francisco. bikeways are funded by two main sources. one is dedicated grants and the other one is voter approved measures that have specific mandates dedicated to only funding, biking and rolling. >> meaning that funding can only go towards biking rolling and cannot be used for muni. they are prop b which was passed more than ten years ago. >> this law is prescriptive and allocates 25% of the funds to street safety projects. the law states that the money cannot be reallocated. prop d passed in 2019 which is the traffic congestion mitigation tax also known as the tnc tax. dedicates 50% of funds to street safety capital improvements. and lastly there's prop l that has very specific categories of how the funding can be used of

which 19% is dedicated to streets and freeways. >> so there are also grant opportunities that staff apply for that bring money into the agency for street safety projects. they include active transportation program grants which is administered by caltrans and safe streets for all grants administered by the federal department of transportation. >> so given the last point about federal funding, it's important to note that resources for building out the northstar network and related programs are inconsistent and will result in the timeline for full implementation of the plan to be decades away. >> the northstar network will not be built tomorrow. >> and lastly in our previous presentation we shared that there are over 100 schools citywide outside of a quarter mile from the network so we're committed to returning in a year with a plan for connecting schools to the network. so in conclusion staff recommends adoption of the plan which includes the goals policies actions northstar network and active

transportation actions as outlined today. thank you. >> happy to take any questions. thank you very much. directors are there any clarifying questions? i have a few clarifying questions and so you know i found the presentation very clear and that was a direct request that i made and i and i just want to acknowledge your work on that and we've received a lot of correspondence about the biking and rolling plan and i notice and i believe my colleagues may have noticed that there's a pretty big difference between what many of the people that are corresponding with us believe

is contained in the in the plan. and and what i'm seeing in the presentation. so i'd like to just ask a few questions to make sure that some of those that it's clear what is and what is not included in the plan. >> so when we vote on the plan today, are we voting to approve any specific bikeway projects? >> and are we allocating any funds importantly to any projects today by if if we if we do pass this plan? yeah. thank you for that question. the biking road plan does not include any specific bikeway projects and it doesn't dedicate any funding towards

any bikeway projects do. does the plan close any additional streets to cars? >> the biking and rolling plan the northstar network does not close any additional streets to cars. are there any future bike lanes planned for merchant corridors ? >> there are no future bikeways planned for merchant corridors if the northstar map were eventually built you say within you know, 20 years what percentage of streets in the city would be impacted by the the fully completed plan? >> if we get to a world where the northstar network is completely built out, it's less

than 10% of our streets >>. >> so you know and i particularly appreciated the the part of the presentation that talked about where the money is coming from and you know and i and we heard this, you know, in our you know, general public comment that the public's very well placed concern about how mta spends its money and the importance of saving our public transit. but what i heard in the present ation is that the funding that is set aside according to a voter approved propositions b, d and l cannot be used for muni

did i understand that correctly? >> that's right. bikeway safety street safety projects do not compete with muni funding b, d and l all voter approved laws specifically mandate that that funding goes to street safety projects. >> so i think that is those are all my questions for now and i would like to open public comment for two minutes each. >> very good. members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. there will be a warning sound, a 30s and a time when it's up. i do have speaker cards before we get started. a reminder that the board doesn't tolerate disruptions or outbursts during its proceedings. this includes clapping or booing. if you want to show support or opposition you may do so silently with a thumbs up or thumbs down wave of the hands. we thank you for your cooperation. i'm going to read some speaker cards audrey maia chalfie,

susan green. >> go ahead patricia. voice. i smell a rat. >> this is the same thing that happened with and jarrod and others. if we can do this blanket rule and then all of a sudden they start using it as an excuse. this is what's bothering me. when it's so blanket by those areas that it does not show how they're going to do outreach, what they're going to do outreach. are they going to just show up like they did with us last week? give us less than three days notice and then all of a sudden we've decided to do this. this isn't a problem that this and this department has. you need to have wording on that that there has to be property proper outreach and not just one little sign and 14 blocks saying we're doing this.

you need to have a really adequate outreach to the customers to your to to us whether it's merchants or whether it's neighbors. etc.. i'm dealing with one area that we've lost 174 parking places because of vision zero and it's it's wrong. we need to correct our errors. now on the western edition we told you not to put a bike lane on the on the wiggle. there have been 5 to 6 deaths because of it. you need to start listening to us because we know we're out there and all we're saying is we're going to do this and this grandiose saying and then all of a sudden well we're going to do it. they give you list and ten days notice they give you a report that just doesn't add up and you need to start being more diligent on us.

and that's my problem. >> that's my objection to this thing. thank you. next speaker i'll find out from c muni. we do not believe it's appropriate to accept this plan at this time. 150 reasons i could give you i got two minutes. let me give you a few. number one, this is not only a bicycle plan. this is a streets plan. and if you don't believe it look at that appendix where it has four closely spaced pages of streets that this affects over 100 streets in san francisco. it's a streets plan. it was developed. however, if you look at their own statistics from their

community meetings. 76% of the people who attended the community meetings were bicycle riders. if you accept even their inflated figures, only 28% of the public rides bicycle and san francisco. this was a plan developed by a special interest for a special interest. if you're developing a street plan you need to have everybody who uses those streets involved motorists, residents, merchants, everybody who uses the streets not just one special interest. number three, this is a whole bunch of cotton candy. ladies mandelman, you hear on the one hand, well there were no projects. but then again there are four pages of projects that they want to do. so what happens? you adopt this plan. then ten years down the road,

five years whatever you're not here. you don't the board doesn't know the context. they just see this list the project oh, they're part of an approved plan. and therefore it's very difficult to oppose part of an approved plan. you should not accept this 1.7 to million dollar boondoggle. thank you. next speaker hello, i'm susan green. >> i live in maui valley and i'm a member of the bicycle coalition and the san francisco climate emergency coalition. for the past 13 years my bicycle has been my primary mode of transit although i am also a frequent muni muni rider and i drive my car once or twice a week for nine of those years i commuted to work down valencia and market streets and experienced the evolution of bike lane infrastructure firsthand. >> since i retired three years

ago i ride regularly in all parts of the city in recent years while biking i've been hit by cars twice both times on designated shared streets both by oncoming cars turning left into me and my bike. and both times fortunately the cars were moving slowly enough that my injuries were minor cracked ribs cuts requiring stitches and significant bruising. all this is to say that i am abundantly aware of the need for better and more extensive protected cycling infrastructure in san francisco. i'm here to ask you to please approve the biking and rolling plan and to strengthen it by directing staff to return in six months with an implementation and plan for slow school zones and more protective crosstown routes. we need these improvements to make cycling safer for everyone. for the health and equity benefits they provide and to meet san francisco's official climate action plan goals, san francisco residents already suffer from more numerous days of poor and dangerous air quality and are seeing

skyrocketing insurance and electricity rates all driven by climate induced wildfires. >> per the city's climate action plan we have just 15 years to make a significant and sustained shift away from car travel to non-fossil fuel transportation modes to help meet the city's net zero carbon emission goals by 2040. >> if we don't, the pace of these climate induced harms will only accelerate. >> i urge you to take quick and significant action to help meet these goals. our future as a healthy, livable city and planet depends on it. >> thank you. thank you. a few more speaker cards pedro concierge co leila ackerman. >> alan ackerman. renee bhatt. next speaker. >> hi, my name is pedro francisco. i'm here to speak in support of the bike and road plan. i live in district seven and i bike to work throughout the city from the sunset and the richmond to chinatown and north

beach. and having safe protected routes makes a huge difference in my commute to work every day. at the same time i own a car and i recognize that interconnected bike network benefits everyone on the road by reducing congestion and improving road safety for everyone. this plan aligns with san francisco's climate action plan. it reduces carbon emissions and promotes active and sustainable transportation options. additionally, prioritizing slow school zones as critical to protecting children from traffic violence and ensuring that they have safe routes to school. i urge as a firm to to approve and strengthen the bike plan today by directing staff to return in six months with an implementation strategy for slow school zones and cross town routes within the year. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello again.

at first of all i want to express my appreciation that on the attempt of this group to be very explicit that this is not actually a plan. it is a vague guideline. there is no budget associated with it. there's no cost projections. there's no metric, there's no cost benefit analysis of any of these actions in the quote unquote plan i.e. vague guidelines that have been explored in any way that would allow you to vote on them as a plan. i would urge you to change the terminology before you vote that you're voting on some vague guidelines. >> i, i love biking. i love walking but i also really love functional cities and i'm very concerned that we are moving in a direction of not allowing our city to recover, not allowing our city to gain regain economic vitality. so i do want to say and unfortunately chair tarlov

missed my appreciation for the questions that were asked and the the sort of pointed ness that we're getting to here. i think i think everyone in this room knows that this is a done deal. this is going to be rubber stamped. i would love if before you rubber stamp it you could change the terminology on it. it is not a plan. it is a guideline. it's irresponsible to vote on this as a plan because as i said, there's no there's no money associated, no metrics, no cost benefit and at least one community organization that supported this has revoked their support due to what they referred to as sort of the bait and switch nature of the way this was presented to their community. and i believe that the bayview and i also just want to comment the 80% of people surveyed less than 600 people were part of that survey. >> this does not reflect the views of san francisco.

>> thank you so much. thank you. your next speaker griffin lee again. district two resident i may sound like a broken record here but i'm going to be speaking a lot of what the last speaker just stated and emphasized it all one there is no budget tied to this plan. >> we're facing a budget deficit. >> but more importantly what i've learned from experience dealing with the mta is just because you have a grant doesn't mean you have to use it especially if it's not in the best interests of every single resident in the room or in central living in san francisco. >> secondly, janet tarlov, i appreciate some of the questions you echoed before public comment here. >> this plan lacks specificity. >> you know, you look on the maps, there's no specific streets on what where this plan will affect or impact.

>> one important thing i just notice in this presentation the short presentation here today too is that although they don't want to say it's it's exclusionary of cars, there's no data that shares how many parking spaces may be eliminated if this plan does get approved. >> lastly i'll go by highly unverified questionable data. >> again, out of these respondents who are the groups where what neighborhoods the list goes on there's too many question marks for this plan to be approved. >> i highly oppose it. if you want to keep the trust of the greater san francisco residents that may not be here today. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker.

>> good afternoon. >> my name is susan ford. i live in district three here to oppose any of the biking and roll plan. for various reasons. number one, it's presented by a special interest group that seems to have very close alliance with city hall which may or may not be reflecting a true population of san francisco residents. and as one resident who is not going to be able to use any of these biking lanes because i don't bike and i rely on public transit i really oppose. i'm really appalled by the idea that the special interest group has gotten so much attention. i would say that number one, it's not going to be a benefit to the air quality primarily because of timing but secondarily because mass transit i.e. busses and trains are a much better solution to air and climate problems than bicycles are. >> if it's truly only 20% of the population who use bikes, i

think that 80% of the population who use this transit it would be much better affected by not having this plan. the people who are powered sound great. but i'd suggest to you that even if you took the bike racks out from the commercial enterprises that are not now taking public parking spaces are more protected by this than my car is when i have to use it to do grocery shopping. >> i can use public transit but i then have to limit my groceries to those things that are like light weight and ongoing. i would suggest that this coalition is strongly supportive of something that is a benefit to everyone except those who are in using the roadways and trying to use transit services. i don't know about these propositions b, d and l whether that money has already been

spent. i also don't know whether in fact there is a reasonable cost to any of this plan plus the inconvenience of converting all of these streets. thank you for hearing me. >> next speaker. >> hi, my name's tricia. oops you doodle. >> does this matter that it's coming off now? okay. >> all right. trust. trust is a huge thing these days. >> we don't have a lot of it. it's in short supply. i don't have a lot of trust. is that nsf mta? no offense to anybody here. i just don't. i've seen a ton of money being spent and i don't get i don't get consulted. i'm a lifelong resident business owner etc.. so anyway but the bike coalition we the people, the residents appointed or elected leaders are partners. any one entity asserting power over another is counterproductive to the whole. >> just because one person or entity can pass through a law

or policy doesn't mean they should. we really need to think very carefully about what we establish here today and every day no notice to me no real notice of major street clause disruptions and taking away parking like overnight and now there's there's doing a street thing on. so these are the reasons that i oppose this thing is because i don't trust sfm to the street things they make it more dangerous for everybody. when you put those bulb things out you have to go into the traffic so you're coming this way. >> pedestrians, bicyclists. i would never ride a bike in the city. >> it's it's terrifying to me. >> i'm serious. please. and i grew up here so anyway okay. >> i've never been as everyone back.

>> is that it? my time's up. you have 30s oh 30s what about when the thing came up? >> okay, so what else do i want to say? >> blah blah blah blah. >> okay, just one last thing. s.f. mta may have already said this almost more than any agency in the city i. i encounter your work multiple times a day on aggravated, aggravated, aggravated and aggravated. so there has to be a better way you guys when you're in our face all the time don't do stuff that makes people so angry and that it's not a good idea. it's not a good tactic. time as policy strategy etc. all the best i hope. >> thank you. next speaker please go ahead. >> hi, i'm c.j. birkeland. i'm a resident of the sunset. i was here before for the play page slow street and i supported that and i just want to reflect that page slow

street and slow streets in general have improved my life greatly and i am extremely happy to cycle in this city and i think that's what has made this city a better place for me personally. driving does stress me out driving does cause me my heart rate to go up like it is right now. but with cycling it's improved my life greatly. i also wonder reflect it. i'm not from san francisco. i'm from a small town of chico, california where cycling there is highly accepted but extremely dangerous. >> this city actually has real infrastructure that protects me and my family and my wife who did grow up here. she wanted me to reflect she cannot be here today that it has made us think about staying in the city and committing to stay in this city. she was not a cyclist. she was not going to be commuting to downtown to her job but now she does every single time she goes downtown. paige has changed that and market street has changed that. please keep market street shut

and i support this wholeheartedly and thank you guys for doing this. >> thank you. i'll read a few more speaker cards. adam bristol danielson. >> jimmy levy. next speaker hello, my name is andrew quinn. i'm the d four resident and i commute by bike and by muni every day to the mission at csfb. i strongly urge you to support this plan and to strengthen it further. people will not use infrastructure if they do not perceive it as safe and i myself have many friends and family members who are willing to hop on the bike and you know, use this infrastructure but they cannot do it for all of their trips or they feel unsafe doing so. >> so thanks. >> thank you. next speaker hi, my name's kevin mauer. i'm a resident of outer sunset and a small business owner in dogpatch and i make that commute on a bike. >> i also have two young

children at sfo usd and to echo what the previous speaker said it can be scary and dangerous to ride a bike sometimes in the city but i would like to know that when my 12 year old leaves for school he is doing so in a safe protected way. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> hi i live in district seven. i grew up here riding my bike and have never been hit by a car i rode across from the southern to the northern for five days a week for about ten years never had this is before any bike lanes so i think the bike lanes that we have now are great and they satisfy a level of safety that we can live with right now because despite it says here a drumbeat of street improvements, injury collisions involving cars have stayed mostly steady since the mid 2000s. so i agree with the other gentleman that this is a street program. it is huge and and it's

massive. >> i didn't realize how big it is and it is a i saw someone's jacket it's a it's a movement this is a movement of a special interest group and also it is inputting slows streets to create connections. >> and when you close or make a slow street it may be 10% but traffic is like it's an organism. it's like a river. it's like a human body. when you change one thing it's going to affect other things through it's like putting a pebble in the water and so that one street might close but it's going to affect how the traffic is going to go around and what what streets that is going to affect and i don't see any input from any traffic engineering consultants which is very important. >> i don't think anyone has who has formed this plan had any input from traffic engineers or from all the people in san

francisco that this is going to affect. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker wow she said i loved that metaphor. it was cool. yeah i oppose i oppose the bike and road plan. i don't oppose biking. i think biking is cool being a biker myself grew up in san francisco. >> i used to ride my bike to school with my friends to work. i don't do it anymore not because i'm unafraid. i just i just don't want to anymore. i grew out of it. >> it's just the way i am. at any rate, i feel we have enough infrastructure right now in the city to meet the needs of bikers and rollers and i'm still concerned about how a lot of bicyclists ride their bikes on san francisco streets. i got nearly hit the other day trying to cross the street by a bicyclist so there is a lot to be done on in terms of people's attitudes and i'm just going to

say i opposed this plan. i know it's going to get rubber stamped but it's important to understand that there's a lot of san franciscans that do not support this. it's a small minority. >> okay. thanks a lot. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello board. my name is jimmy. i am speaking in support of the biking and rolling plan. i commute by bike from my home in glen park to presidio middle school in the outer richmond. my life improved significantly when i began commuting by bike. and i'm grateful for san francisco's existing infrastructure for making my commute possible and relatively safe. and i am not alone. there are bikes parked every day at the bike rack in front of presidio. >> and every day i see parents with children biking to school in both glen park and the richmond. my wife might be the only person in glen park who owns a cargo bike but not a child seat for it. we bought a cargo bike with the

hopes that maybe one day we'll need a child seat. it's very clear to me that many families and school staff need safe biking infrastructure to get to school every day. >> however, not everyone can commute to schools the way i can. >> parts of the cycling network are less safe for me and for families who want to bike to school. the rolling plan identifies many schools that are not within a quarter mile of a safe bike route. in addition, there are bike roads that are mostly safe but have small gaps or the infrastructure is not so safe. if i were a parent i would not subject my child to some of the intersections that i encounter daily on my commute. it's imperative for s.f. mta to adopt the biking and rolling plan and commit to a safe future for our children. besides my written comments i want to add i do want to echo a previous speaker spoke about safety and the wiggle i do agree that it is subpar safety wise to bike in the wiggle. it is also some of the most pleasant cycling in the city and the biking rolling plan

specifically addresses the wiggle as a place that could use increased bike safety. >> that single change would make my commute go from mostly safe to safe enough that i could take a future child there. >> so thank you for hearing me. thank you. a few more speaker cards. >> caroline ayers. puja muda. sonny david. tara. next speaker. >> hi, my name is carolyn ayres . i live in district eight. i strongly support the biking and rolling plan. and i hope that you can in fact strengthen it as well. i think that this plan has included multiple kinds of people. i'm a parent but i could not have my kids ride bikes when they were little because it was too dangerous. already you have improved the infrastructure so that maybe my kids could have ridden bikes but but when they were little there really wasn't an option. so i think we need to keep

working on it and improving it . san francisco doesn't have a school bus system so kids have to ride muni which is fine and great but it would be brilliant if they could ride bikes to school. and so that's why i really strongly support this so that the future kids could ride bikes. that would be amazing. and then i wanted to say that i'm an older person and so i just have really enjoyed riding my bicycle. it's like freedom for me and i love muni. i can't afford a car. there's a lot of people in san francisco who cannot. and so that's another reason i support this because it's serving the needs of people who can't afford to have a car. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello directors. my name is adam bristol and i'm a resident of district two. i'm asking you and encouraging you to adopt a strong and visionary biking and rolling plan. i believe doing so is in line

with the values of the residents of our city as shown by some of the public service survey data. >> doing so i believe is vital to support a new phase of growth that san francisco will soon embark on. >> it'll be incredibly challenging for our city to accommodate roughly 80,000 new housing units without offering safe and affordable multi-modal transportation options to new and longtime residents. we already see increases in micromobility transport around the city with many bicycles and scooters in use today and we need a public infrastructure to support that existing trend. >> i also believe that a strong biking and rolling plan is consistent with our city's environmental goals, our public safety goals and our social equity goals. i would argue to they would improve the quality of life in the city. i'm also a father of two young children and we bicycle to and from school every day. many parents at my children's school have expressed to me the desire to bike with their kids to school but are afraid to do so without a connected network

of bicycle lanes or protected bicycle lanes. i truly believe that if we build it they will come as we've seen in other great cities around the world. >> the city's charter schools excuse me the city's charter explicitly states that bicycling shall be promoted by encouraging safe streets for riding and mandates a safe inter-connected bicycle circulation network. >> adopting an ambitious biking and rolling plan will help satisfy that mandate. >> thank you for the opportunity to speak and i appreciate your attention to this important issue. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello. my name is puja with the sony and i am a resident of d9 and i'm here to urge you to approve the biking and rolling plan today and to also commit to returning to the plan with more improvements to slow school zones and cross-town roads rather this year. so i'm a cyclist. i also ride muni. i don't own a car and me

and many others who have bikes like people who've shared stories today have been injured in the past because of collisions with cars and it's not fair to continually make cyclists take this risk of their own lives and safety. >> so we need more dedicated and separated bike lanes and slow school zones to make cycling safer for all residents a commitment to the biking and rolling plan is just the first step and redesigning our streets to truly be for everyone. i as i said i take both muni and biking. both transit and biking can work together to be complementary like us to be sustainable option options for transportation and for other people like me to also have viable options to get around the city. >> and thank you all.

yeah. thank you. next speaker. >> hello my name is charlotte and i am a d8 resident. i am here today to encourage you to vote for the biking and rolling plan and to prevent muni cuts if possible. i have biked and taken the bus to work in school for many years. having good bike infrastructure and keeping busses going keeps the roads clear for those who need to take cars. i especially like the idea of investing in bike infrastructure in the southern neighborhoods and increased bike parking. there are times when i would like to bike but there is no safe route or parking. this plan helps improve this. i have also taken muni to work. i believe that opening muni metro at 7 a.m. is too late for workers who start early. i know you might not want to make these cuts so if they could be avoided that would be

appreciated. as we add housing we need to invest in bike and busses. thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is jose dominguez and i'm a tenderloin resident. and i'm here today to fully support this plan because we have a vision in the tenderloin and the vision that we have is for our children to be able to walk, bike live, play and thrive. and this plan actually helps us to get there. and when we think about future generations and climate change and asking ourselves what did we do you who have the power, what did you do to help our future generations thrive? >> the biking plan is part of it. so thank you so much for making this come possible. >> thank you. next speaker.

>> good afternoon. my name's carol brownson and i'm really pleased to hear all of this discussion interesting discussion about the biking and rolling plan. >> as you see it's called biking and rolling plan. and of course i roll everywhere i go in san francisco but i don't see my particular type of rolling address particularly particularly well. so i would like to have one thing added to the biking and rolling plant those sidewalks. i have a map in my mind oh at this corner i have to change to that side of the sidewalk because if i go up this side i'll get thrown in to the alleyway by that tree and if i lie about you you know you've seen the sidewalks and i really quite appreciate the slow streets.

improving them would be good. and there's a nice thing about this low streets there's so much less dog on them. >> so i am here to support the biking in rolling plan. anything that makes it better for all means of transport to get around the city i'm in favor of. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker any of the names of called can speak or anybody cued up i can share a few more for your name gabriel brown. >> good afternoon everyone. my name is linda ackerman. i live in district one. i've been riding a bicycle around the city for 50 years now all over the city long before there were dedicated bike paths. i don't want to repeat what other people have spoken to better than i can about the inadequacy of the plan. i hear i'm here to speak

against it. >> and let me give you two primary reasons. >> one is that as it's been presented it seems completely aspirational to me but aspirational in a way that's en route to becoming a fait accompli before anyone really knows what's happening. and you may wake up one day and look outside and see plants, barriers, barriers planted in your street that you now have to deal with. my other primary objection to adding more personal transportation rolling stock to the city now is the sidewalks. the sidewalks have become completely unsafe because of scooters and various other wheeled things on the sidewalks and there's nothing being done to prevent them from operating on the sidewalks. i've been i've avoided being hit so far but have come very close to being hit by somebody zooming on a scooter down the

street. this is this is a real problem and there's nothing in this plan that addresses that. and i think that it would be foolish to pass a plan if this is a plan other than a plan to pass a plan without taking that into account. >> thank you. >> thank you. next speaker though, as for mta board of directors my name is susan george. i live and work in d9. i'm a senior and i get around the city by walking biking in public transit and i do want to say i really have enjoyed the quick build on 17th street that has made my life so much better going over to the ucsf medical center on a regular basis. and i hope that you approve and strengthens biking and rolling plan today. i feel like i was amazed at one

time i saw a photo of the cities and in denmark, copenhagen and i 3040 years ago and it looked a lot like our city or maybe san diego or l.a. and now look at it today. so there is possible to make us have a city more like that that has lots more biking and it is just is a healthier way to live it provides fresher air etc. etc. meets our schools. but i, i feel that the there are some recommendations i have and one of them is if the the high i guess what you call it the high quality bike lanes that are for people that are

all ages all abilities i just recommend that there are some points in the valencia bike segment that i would not recommend for that that are really considered unsafe from 23rd to cesar chavez. there's no protection there. and i would not want my if i had a five year old grandchild or an older parent to ride there. i think it's a bit unsafe. other than that, thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello again director kirschbaum church hall of directors. >> just to reiterate my name is fiona yim and i'm also francisco's communications and marketing manager. walk us i have strongly supports the proposed biking and rolling plan as a crucial step for our city and support a vision zero vision zero remains an essential commitment and proven approach to end severe and fatal traffic crashes. >> vision zero means prioritizing safety and the biking and rolling plan as part

of that. every time you leave your home to get somewhere you're only as safe as a leaf's least safe part of your journey. we face these situations all the time as pedestrians when to walk include streets with dangerous speeding or dangerous intersections. >> this plan will make sure they're fully connected to safe routes to get around our city on a bicycle or scooter but will do much more than that. the biking rolling plan will make streets safer for everyone in so many ways. that's because when a street gets a bike lane it calms traffic. it calms traffic by narrowing the width so drivers naturally slow down and go save speeds when there are great bike lanes . cyclists and scooters use them which keep sidewalks safe for pedestrians. >> most importantly the easier it is to get around with the car without a car the more people will do it which reduces traffic and traffic crashes. with 2024 being the deadliest in a decade for traffic fatalities, this is the time to move boldly forward towards the san francisco where we can all walk out the door. i know that every part of our journey will be safe. thank you for your leadership on vision zero. where's your to move forward? a strong biking and rolling plan today including codifying strong design standards

and establishing clear metrics that reported back to the public. >> thank you. thank you. >> next speaker. good afternoon directors. my name is gabriel brown. i'm a district three resident and a graduate student at ucsf and i'm here to speak in strong favor of the biking and rolling plan. i did want to raise a concern though as we heard earlier, this plan won't be built overnight and that to build up the northstar map will take 20 years which puts us out at 2045. and as we know, the city has committed to building 82,000 new residents units in the next six years and population growth estimates from the state and from the federal government have san francisco at over a million people by 2045. and so i want to make sure that when we get to 2045 we don't find ourselves with the facilities this necessary to

meet our needs of today. but rather that as the city continues to grow in density continues to grow in certain parts of the city that this plan be continually updated so that we are meeting the needs of the city as it grows. and yeah, with my remaining time i would also like to thank the and rolling team. i know there's been a ton of outreach, a lot of which i've gone to. i mean it's been really fun to watch this progress of the project progress. and just to push back against we heard earlier that there has not been outreach for a lot of projects. and i can attest that that's not the case. and so i appreciate the effort and the time that you all put into this. >> so thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. as a former board of directors my name is kyle. i'm a resident of district nine. i rely on public transit,

cycling and walking to satisfy my daily transportation needs. my wife who commutes to ucsf children's hospital five or more days a week by bicycle, rain or shine does the same. thank you for those beautiful new protected bike lanes on 17th street. by the way, i love them. i'm here to urge you today to urge you to prioritize the safety and well-being of people over the convenience of parking spaces as reported in an article from the san francisco chronicle on december 30th, 2024, our city experienced 34 murders in 2024. in stark contrast, there were 41 motor vehicle related deaths on san francisco surface streets that same year. this alarming statistic highlights that motor vehicles pose the most significant threat to the safety and lives of our residents particularly to those who choose to commute with active transportation. >> but these deaths are entirely preventable by deploying smart infrastructure choices. so we must ask ourselves what is an acceptable number of motor vehicle related deaths? is it 41? is it 100? is it something more?

if your answer is not zero then we must question our priorities. are we truly prepared to explain to grieving families that although we sympathize with their loss, we chose to preserve free parking spaces over the preservation of human lives? i implore you to take decisive action and adopt the san francisco bike and rolling plan today with increased reserve provisions for slow school zones and accessible crosstown routes within the year. by doing so you'll be taking a critical step towards ensuring the safety of our residents and reducing the number of preventable motor vehicle related deaths. at the end of the day if there is no safe bike lane for me to use then i'm just going to take the lane as i'm legally allowed to. and i'm just going to slow you down even more. so it's in your best interest to have a bike lane for people to use. >> thank you for your time consideration in this matter. i appreciate everything you guys do. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. hello. >> i'm a public school teacher and i wish to speak on behalf of people who work outside of the home. they do not work on on zoom or

computers or whatever the children are trying to get to school. their parents are working people. they're dropping them off at school. i don't see many bikes at the high school. i don't like 1 or 2 but people need to get someplace quickly and it's very difficult with everything being slowed down. also people are talking about how many bicycle deaths and i want to know how we're supposed to get to the air quickly. i had a case where i had to go 5 or 6 times for a member of the family in the summer a couple of years ago and i was really happy to be able to go across town a certain way to be able to get there quickly when we needed to. i also understand that six that this survey was given to only fewer than 600 people. that's not a comprehensive survey for for san francisco. and then i want to make the point to everybody's talking about denmark and whatever. although i'm a quarter swedish, i've never been to scandinavia and i've been to europe. i've been to seville

beautifully built for the medieval times and it's very fun to go down the walking streets. but this is a different kind of thing. we have a large city people need to get to work and this is about working people and it's not just for recreation. most people can't to have the liberty of even going to school and you know or work with their bicycles because they have to be there. they have to get children there and i beg that you would oppose this this bike and rolling plan. >> thank you so much. thank you. >> next speaker. >> hi i'm overland and i'm a resident of about outer sunset and i support this plan for the bike and rolling plan. i just came back from a five month study abroad in the netherlands. i've actually been to scandinavia amazing people and only about 20 percent of people actually bike in the netherlands though they have a very extensive bike network. everyone actually most people still drive in the netherlands surprisingly but they've got a really nice train network so

everyone can move around actually love cars and driving does not stress me out. it actually calms me down. >> in the future i hope to have a gas guzzling v8 corvette during the weekends but during the weekdays i'm going to be biking taking public transit. however, as a biker biking shouldn't be unsafe and this plan helps to work towards a better future with safer transportation options. i know many people who don't treat driving with the same respect as i do further for everyone and cars have had the priority for too many years. everyone shouldn't have to drive. not every parent should have to take time out of the day to drive their kid to school and the netherlands i keep seeing all these kids going to school biking with their friends after school, not bothering their parents, not taking their time. the parents could bring more to the table, get some more working hours and you know and no matter viewpoints on this plan, i'm glad we all have a space to voice their opinions and i'm glad to call the city home. >> thank you. next speaker hi, my name is

sarah and i live in d-2 and i just want to say that a substantial majority of san francisco households rely on driving to work school and appointments and caregiving, running errands, hauling equipment and making deliveries and san francisco businesses thrive only if customers can reach them. even people who don't own cars depend on vehicles, delivery trucks etc. to provide goods and services for their own convenience. i believe that the biking and rolling plan guidelines is bad governance and illustrates how san francisco city hall has operated for the last decade. we cannot afford more irresponsible government action. >> this initiative is ill conceived and alarmingly has no price tag or funding estimates yet. >> so really how do you guys how does s.f. mta plan to pay for this predictably expensive

program when facing an astronomical deficit facing a deficit of upwards of 300 million along with its threats along with threats to cut funding for muni and school crossing guards, s.f. empty has no business putting forth this foolish plan that has no price tag or funding estimates as i've said, isn't based on a shred of evidence that it won't adversely affect traffic flow and potentially increase traffic times doesn't consider how slowing down the flow of traffic will influence the costs of living and doing business in our city and threatens san francisco's potential for strong economic recovery. >> i strongly suggest you oppose it. >> thank you. the next speaker. >> hi my name is jeff dolman and i'm here to support the biking and rolling plan. i've lived in san francisco for more than 30 years and i did ride my bike here.

>> i also walk i also take muni . up until about a year ago i drove quite often. i'm one of those lucky people who doesn't have to drive. i can walk to a muni stop. i can ride my bike but i work in health care so i see patients on a regular basis who cannot do the do those things. however, i do believe that the biking and rolling plan will provide for those people. i just want to i don't have anything really prepared to say but i've been listening to a lot of the speakers here and i just want to respond to some of the things that some people have said. i've heard multiple speakers say that this is just a special interest group trying to minority trying to just pass some kind of special interest idea. i don't believe safety is a special interest. i believe safety should be in

the interest of all of us. and even though i rode my bike here today, did i feel safe? not really. i think that as fta has done a good job getting things get it getting bike lanes put in and it has increased the safety and it's made me feel safer and yet i could tell you just this past week on numerous occasions i have nearly been hit by a driver who is either on their cell phone or driving too fast or taking a left hand turn on valencia when they shouldn't have. also a plan is not necessarily always fleshed out. we all have plans that we may not know every single item contained within it and we can work on that as we go along. the important thing is is to let's try to make san francisco a functional city and safer. >> thank you. >> thank you. next speaker.

good afternoon again. director is still in fabris with san francisco transit riders. i'm here to ask you to approve and strengthen the breaking and rolling plan. >> today i'd like to start by thanking director tarlov, tarlov and ms.. orozco for their pointed questions and answers at the beginning of this. i think that potentially saved us from a lot of uninformed or bad faith public comments. so and i'm really glad that it's been clear it's been made clear that the biking and rolling plan does not jeopardize muni service or muni lines supporting safe biking infrastructure supports everyone using our streets. uh whether you're in a car, a transit vehicle, a bike or on foot getting bikes and scooters out of car lanes and transit lanes and off of sidewalks

impacts all of us. people are talking about scooters and bikes and sidewalks. this is a solution to that. and biking, walking, transit all very complimentary modes and people should be given the tools they need to leverage those three modes in whatever way best suits them. earlier today i was doing outreach for ride meaning to school week this week at a g middle school and there were so many students there who showed up on scooters but then you asked them how do you how did you get to school? and they say oh i took muni and then i got on my scooter or i took muni and then got on my bike. and i think that speaks to how these modes are interconnected. people aren't just taking the bikes or taking muni and we need to approve this plan today to make the streets safer and more connected for everybody. >> thank you. thank you. and next speaker good afternoon

tom de la rich with livable city. so 25 years ago the voters passed proposition e which created this agency the s.f. mta. >> so in your charter the voters directed you to create a safe and interconnected bicycle network. a few paragraphs down it's a safe and comprehensive bicycle network in case you missed it the first time. but the voter mandate is clear. it is your job to create a safe and interconnected and into and comprehensive bicycle network for this city. so of course a quarter century later we have a plan before you it's not that right. so you're 25 years later with your homework. they're asking for a 20 year extension. this plan needs to get stronger. it needs to get stronger quickly. in 27 the voters reiterated their support for the bike network and amended the charter again. the mta charter's put you in charge of a climate plan to look at the transportation sector and as you all know,

your climate plan the agency's climate plan which i hope you will return to but the old version of the climate plan you need to update it does call for a several fold increase in cycling because that's the way we're going to meet our climate goals. private cars account for about half the climate emissions in san francisco county. everything else every other mode of transportation, every building, everything else accounts for the other half. so there's no way we're going to meet our climate goals without a strong biking and rolling plan. so what would make this stronger? one would be make it a five year plan. so somebody mentioned severe earlier severe cet in spain 750,000 people decided within five years to build a comprehensive network of connected lanes. they increased cycling several fold. i think it was 11 fold after five years this i think now 17 fold from before. >> so we should do this as a city, go to severe figure out how they do it, come back and show you the other thing is make it comprehensive. we need to look at these community action plans. some of them are strong recommend improvements to the network. some of them don't recommend

anything. however, you had a lot of input from these district townhalls where people said yeah, make specific improvements in soma and the tenderloin etc. you need to reconcile those into a single plan. we need one plan not seven because it needs to be comprehensive. >> it needs to be interconnected. thank you very much. thank you. next speaker hello my name is my tracy chaffey. as i've said previously i'm a low income car free resident in the mission and i depend on transit walking and biking to get around my day job as an an environmental justice nonprofit working for underserved communities. we get free e-bikes to delivery workers who need them the most and i constantly hear from our participants that biking in san francisco doesn't feel safe and they don't have safe places to store their bikes. this plan can begin to change that. on the positive side i constantly hear from them that doing bike deliveries gives them the freedom to not deal with the stress of parking. they don't have to worry about

double parking or parking in a bike lane or parking in a red zone and how it also saves them a lot of money. we constantly know parking is a big fight in the city. that is one of the ways to do it. if delivery workers are all on e-bikes they don't have to worry about parking anymore. my partner recently just started biking in the city and i want to be confident that she can go out and bike safely where she needs to go and that i don't have to stress about her potentially being hit by a car. i urge the board to approve this plan with the condition that as a female and the city must continue building trust with historically underserved communities even after the plan has passed. i want to give a huge thanks to staff who've been working on this project for years and i hope to continue seeing you out talking to the community throughout the implementation. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is elisa chung and i live in ocean view neighborhood in district 11.

i walk bike, take transit and drive first even though i know this was mentioned earlier ,i just want to state quickly that i emphatically and strongly oppose the policy to allow left turns on valencia which endangers pedestrians and cyclists. >> second, i'm joining the dozens of people in this room and urging you to approve the biking and rolling plan. the group that i volunteer with we are all my has worked with mta staff over the past two years to host two open houses for de 11 and i've seen how much time and effort staff have poured in developing this plan . and so we're really grateful and eager to see this pass and we're especially excited because this plan outlines improvements for the southwestern corner of our city which has long been overlooked with regards to bike infrastructure. however, like many have pointed out, this is a first step. as a mom i think one measure of success for this plan is feeling assured that my three year olds can one day bike safely to school. >> so on behalf of the thousands of families who bike in the city, i urge you to direct staff to take to actions

first please our staff to come back within six months with a tangible plan to implement slow school zones within the first two years of implementation. >> second please direct staff to come back within a year with a plan to implement crosstown routes that meet the ctos all ages and abilities guidelines. we all deserve to be able to travel around the city safely and passing this plan is one big step in making sure that's a reality. >> thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. good afternoon commissioners. my name is three more argument i live in the sunset. when i express my support for the biking and rolling plan a year and a half ago i was hospitalized with a spinal cord injury and was in hospital for a month and then discharged in a wheelchair. it's been a long recovery that's still ongoing. first thing i realized it was very difficult to be seen at wheelchair height and crossing the street especially if there's a car park that's blocking the view of the crosswalk from the viewpoint of like a driver approaching it.

so i want to express my support for delighting in its actions which is part of this plan. i also heard very similar concerns from parents about their kids being visible when crossing the street. >> also i realized that depending on the nature of the disability driving is not a great option. in some cases like mine it wasn't even an option. when i was discharged i was advised not to drive for a while because i had total foot drop and very little control of my legs. >> i still have foot drop in driving. it's still not easy for me. and also want to mention i met some long time manual wheelchair users in the disability community who couldn't drive but they had attached a electric assist thingy at the back of the wheelchair to make it easier to propel forward especially uphill. i was able to try one on mine at margaret and i've also probably seen similar attachments on strollers that parents use to push their stroller up hills with no kids in them. and there's also like granny carts that have electric assist now for grocery shopping.

>> so all these things are getting more affordable and you know it's becoming not just possible but practical and enjoyable to get around using sustainable and active transport modes. so this is the right time to pass this plan. this is the right time to end the practice of privileging car drivers at the expense of the safety of everyone else and i hope you all approve this biking and rolling plan. >> thank you. thank you. all read some speaker cards. >> bill mclarnon. kathleen g. cindy baker. >> good. good evening board. cyrus hall. i want to urge you to approve this plan with amendments amendments that would ideally call for five things. one a connected network of protected lanes. unfortunately the current plan leaves vast portions of the city particularly the southern part the western part. historically disadvantaged parts like the bayview with no protected north south or east west route to a clear path for the resolution of the community

action plans within two years. it's the city's responsibility and of day to come up with a plan and it's important to have community input. but it's the city that is responsible for keeping riders safe. end of the day and we need to have a timeline that's reasonable on those plans. >> three clear and realistic outcome metrics. >> how do we want to see our streets change? how are we going to define those changes? how are we going to measure those changes and how are we planning backwards from those metrics? >> fourth, a funding commitment. i appreciate the q&a that happened earlier. i think it was very explanatory about how these programs are funded. this money does not come from muni operations so we need to be seeking the grant money that is necessary using our very limited funds. >> and five a clear addendum that would enhance a multi-modal vision of the city . i would love to see biking become the first mile solution to accessing frequent and rapid transit. when we treat these modes separately we miss an opportunity to really enhance

the availability of muni and that's particularly true as we're going into tough financial times where there may be cuts. unfortunately some muni service and having a first mile solution would help connect riders to the system so please pass this and please consider amending the resolution to call for staff to come back within a year to present a better plan. >> thank you so much. thank you. >> next speaker. >> hi, i'm cindy bekir d one on on september 25th, 1992. cyclists disrupted car drivers friday night commute with the first ever critical mass sparking a movement that spread around the world. the city responded with arrests and other confrontations. >> fortunately the sfp c and s.f. mta agreed to work together to improve cycling safety and here we are today we take for granted that there are bike racks on muni busses, bike

and car sharing services on public streets and secure public parking at some bart stations. sidewalk bike racks proliferated. and for me personally evolutionary of the evolution of multimodal travel in the city encouraged me to give up my car to become a daily all-weather bike commuter and and then i progressed to become a bicycle tourist. and i've explored 17 states and puerto rico on two wheels and as a host to bike tourists from all over the world. >> i am proud to show them our robust bike infrastructure. in my opinion the early goal of providing safe crosstown bike ways north to south and east to west for people 8 to 80 has made great progress from my home in the inner richmond i can ride to heron head park in the southeast of the city entirely on bike lanes many of them painted and or protected and nearly car free to ocean beach. >> for years survey after survey showed that people want to bike but did not feel safe.

the recent and dramatic increase in the number of families who have chosen to acquire a cargo bike instead of a second car would not have occurred unless those parents felt safe enough transporting their kids to school and other places by bikes. >> over the years it also seems that car drivers are more aware of cyclists and feel safer knowing that there's a separate space for them on the road. >> i would like to thank sfm t staff for opportunities for community input regarding plan changes. it's not perfect but demonstrates a willingness to hear all sides. i fully support the current bike and road plan and i just want to show how far we've come and how changes in accommodation can transform people's lives. >> thank you. your next speaker. >> i'm matt biggar. i'm my family and i have lived in the castle for over 20 years. as a dea resident i get around our car by walking, taking muni biking, scooting and driving like many of the speakers

you've heard from, i'm here in support of the biking and rolling plan and just hearing all the different stakeholders here. there's many, many reasons. some of the ones that come to my mind are that you know the rest of my family does use all the meds except for biking the city and i'm the exception to my family. they simply don't feel safe getting across the city in many ways and i really feel this biking and rolling plan will get them and so many other san franciscans biking and rolling across the city. we're clearly you know we as identified very well in the plan. we we like crosstown routes and even school zones that are safe and accessible especially for all ages and ability, you know, as the second most densely populated city in the us it makes no sense that we prioritize cars given that it is the least efficient use of our street space with only 80 miles and protected bike lanes streets or car free spaces where people can bike and road safely compared to over 50 or approximately 5600 miles of lanes dedicated to cars in san francisco.

biking right is a limited option despite the high demand for it. so some reallocation of streets space is definitely necessary. we've known this for a long time as as many speakers have alluded to how it fits into our plans and the mta presentation and with with you know the survey that 80% of san franciscans wanting to bike and roll it's you know, it's very clear what we need and completing protected bike infrastructure across 17th street is a great 17th street is a great example is so many different modes that now use our bike and rolling lanes that have changed over the last ten years with e-bikes and e-scooters i just want to say like the the opposition to the plan does not speak for a lot of you know many, many san franciscans who want to bike and roll. they don't represent san franciscans struggling with the cost of living. transportation is the second highest cost for expense for low income families in san francisco and biking and public transit are clearly affordable compared to that. thank you. i'm so i urge you to approve the plan and strengthen it with

the schools and zones are coming back very soon on that. >> thank you. i'll read the rest of the speaker cards ryan patterson, patricia carlin. >> rachel clyde clara. bob lane. christopher white go ahead lou directors ryan patterson district eight i bike i take transit, i walk and i also drive a necessary a good biking and rolling plan is good for all of the above. it reduces conflict between these modes of travel, it reduces congestion and it even frees up parking. a ton of time has gone into this plan and it is time to approve it today. more importantly, we still need a timeline with concrete steps for implementation and echoing a previous speaker i would like to request that you direct your staff to come back within six months with a real implementation plan for slow school zones and cross town routes within a year. the existing situation is dangerous and it's time to fix

it. >> thank you very much. thank you. your next speaker. >> hello, i'm flo kelly and i volunteer with the coalition on homelessness and i live in bernal heights and i am so amazed to see so many parents riding their bikes with their infants and toddlers strapped to the bikes and i go whoa so much braver than i am. >> so it looks to me like in order to get vehicles that people live in off the street sometimes mta decides to build a bike lane. for example, i have seniors on lake mirsad boulevard and on parts of evans in the bayview where the bike lanes are now. i do not see more bikes however on those streets.

and for sure there is no vehicles that people live in on those streets where the bike lanes are. so i hope that as this plan slash guideline may move forward that you have the option to approve individual streets for bike lanes as they may come up and that those streets will be listed on the mta board agenda for public comment and a board vote. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello. my name is eric roselle. i'm here today as a long time resident of the tenderloin and co-chair of the tenderloin traffic safety task force. i'm here to express strong support for the bike in unrolling plan and ask that you adopt it today. this plan is crucial for enhancing traffic safety in our city's most vulnerable neighborhoods like the tenderloin which faces

disproportionately high rates of pedestrian and cyclist injuries as well as health complications related to vehicle emissions. implementing the recommended policies and infrastructural improvements like protected mobility lanes, traffic calming measures and increasing enforcement will directly reduce these risk. this plan prioritizes safe, accessible mobility for all residents especially children, seniors and those with disabilities which the tenderloin has some of the highest population options. i urge the mta board to prioritize and expedite the implementation of this vital plan by approving it today. our community has been subjected to traffic, violence and poor infrastructure long enough. any more delays since the message that our safety and quality of lives don't matter? i want to thank our city staff that worked on this project and community members who

provided crucial feedback on the biking and rolling plan. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon directors. >> my name is rachel clyde. i'm the west side community organizer for the san francisco bicycle coalition. you and i and most of the people in this room have seen how the s20 staff have worked on this project tirelessly for almost three years. we know the hours, days and weeks of hard work and community outreach that went into making this plan and that is in front of you today. >> and you know that there will be countless positive outcomes that derive from your approval of the plan today. we are truly at the precipice of something amazing. the process of creating the biking and rolling plan centered the voices of five communities that have experienced real historic and present day harms at the hands of city government. i think it's really important to recognize how unique it is that city staff incorporated equity into every piece of the plan and actually made it a priority. and of course we can't solve

all of our issues with one document but the community action plans that the community organizations produced have the potential to undo these harms and make our city so much more vibrant, livable and equitable . >> promoting biking and rolling is written into san francisco's charter which states biking shall be promoted by encouraging safe streets for writing and mandates a safe and interconnected bicycle circulation network? >> we have been stressing these points from the very beginning. every single person in san francisco deserves to have access to safe streets high quality and affordable micro-mobility options. clean air community spaces and more. passing this plan fulfills ac fuentes job as articulated in the city's charter. >> and we are counting on you to uphold your promises to san franciscans. >> please approve the biking and rolling plan today and strengthen it by directing staff to return in six months with an implementation plan for low school zones. and return within a year for crosstown route implementation . >> thank you. thank you. your next speaker.

>> good evening directors. >> my name is clara mobley. i'm the director of advocacy at the san francisco bicycle coalition. i'm here today to ask that you adopt the biking and rolling plan to help guide our city on what the next 20 years of transportation planning will look like. this is, as you've said, is not a plan that closes streets to cars or implements 24 hour parking meters. this plan especially does not take funding away from muni operations because they come from two entirely different funding sources. for over a century our streets have been designed for driving 5600 miles of lanes dedicated to people who drive in our city and yet our existing disconnected bike network only accounts for 80 miles of protected bike infrastructure which the plan's opponents will tell you is still too much. >> but we know that san franciscans want sustainable transportation options. everyone wants a reliable muni system. the 10% of residents who bike daily want to bike across town without feeling like they're

going to die. and the 80% of bike curious residents said building more bike infrastructure will make them feel safer getting on a bike. >> transportation is the second highest expense and step after housing and car ownership increases that cost even higher. providing affordable, healthy, sustainable transportation options is simply good policy and gets us closer to our city's climate goals. in ten years the city must build 82,000 housing units if those residents 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 assab especially the people who must rely on driving like the many seniors. people with disabilities and low income workers we must work together to envision a sustainable, affordable and safe transportation system that supports all the modes that people already travel making bike lanes safer and transit more reliable. so people aren't forced into expensive and isolating car dependency. so please approve the plan today and direct staff to do

two things return in six months with an implementation plan for the first low school zones and return in one year for a roadmap for crosstown routes. >> thank you. next speaker hello again board christopher white, executive director of the san francisco bicycle coalition. at the last informational hearing about the biking rolling plan director hemminger sadly not here today asked what the plan is and what it is not. i see it as a restatement of the values that san francisco has embraced for decades through the language of policy ,community planning and aspirational maps way back in 1973 the city officially declared its transit first values that we prioritize sustainable healthy people first transportation like transit, walking, biking and rolling. and in doing so we make people less dependent on private cars. >> what this plan is not is a tool to end car use and s.f. as

some people have characterized it. the plan does not propose a single new car free street in the city which we're not celebrating. >> it's just a fact. but when less than one tenth of 1% of travel lanes in s.f. are devoted to biking and rolling, it's not a real option for everyone. >> if someone can't make the decision to bike and roll and feel safe we are forcing them to be dependent on expensive unsustainable cars. >> passing this plan today is just the beginning. as we've been saying for months the lack of goals and timelines creates an accountability vacuum and we appreciate board members efforts to provide direction. director chen thank you for directing staff to plan to implement slow calm zones around s.f. schools within two years. >> please direct staff to return in six months with a plan to achieve this life saving direction. >> i'm likewise glad to see the crosstown connection routes of the northstar network included in the draft but again there is no timeline. we need to genuinely all ages

and abilities grid of crosstown routes and that should be achievable within five years. directors please pass this plan but please also direct staff to come back within one year to present a plan to implement this pace grid by the end of the plan's first five years. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker i'm clarissa garvey and i live in the dogpatch. >> i support adoption of the biking in rolling plan with commitment to strengthen its safety measures when designing projects to implement it. >> ultimately the people in support of a strong version of this plan want to bike without fear of injury or death. you all are well aware of the beneficial ripple effects this has including reducing vehicle traffic. there are two points i want to call out with regards to safety. >> first, the plan currently still has a deeply concerning map of the current all ages and abilities network. it seems like this criteria is being applied using like a checklist mentality rather than a holistic view of the areas in

which it's designating as all ages and abilities roadways near highways and the bay bridge and those in the high injury network need to be designed with an understanding of the surrounding areas. and to be clear the dangers in these areas really are preventing people from biking there. >> for example, i talked to a friend in the past few weeks who stopped biking completely due to nearly being hit by a car in an area in soma currently designated as safe for all ages and abilities. please use a deeper understanding in your designs than just meeting the all ages and abilities bar. >> second school areas must be prioritized. >> when i was hit while biking also in the currently so-called save for all ages and abilities network and by a driver taking a left turn i went up on the hood of their car. >> a child who was hit by a car does not have the luxury of going up onto the hood of the car and would instead be hurt much more seriously than i was. >> i echo the call to

prioritize planning around school zones please come back within six months rather than a year with a plan to implement safe school zones within the first two years of the biking and rolling plan. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon director zach lipton. >> i was on the policy working group for the plan. first i just want to urge you to support the plan and really to thank christy rosario and the entire team for running what has to be the largest, longest, most comprehensive outreach process of i think any project that i'm aware of in mta history. >> the state in the plan and this comes from an independent third party polling firm really speaks for itself. >> nearly 30% of san franciscans biker roman least weekly and nearly 80% would do it if we made it safe for them to do so. >> that represents hundreds of thousands of san franciscans who are already biking and rolling right now and their safety is your responsibility. >> i heard someone say earlier

i don't oppose biking but i opposed this plan and what that is effectively saying is well you can do what you want but i don't care if it's safe for you to do it. >> there was a study out of spain that showed that when they put in more protected bike lanes it also increased the proportion of women and families who were biking. that just came out recently and i think really shows that this kind of work helps build equity. >> it's important to make two points. first, this plan is the law. the board of supervisors has passed repeatedly laws directing us mta to do work exactly like this. and the agency needs to carry that out and people with frustrations should should take that to their supervisors and not blame this agency for for doing what our elected officials have asked. >> and second of all, the funding does not compete with muni in any way for this project. but it's important to build on this living plan adopting the northstar goal of putting every san franciscan within a quarter mile of a truly safe connected network suitable for all ages and abilities is a great step and i applaud it.

>> but unfortunately the network in this plan does not yet live up to that vision and we don't know when we'll see it. we know from cities around the world that we can do that inexpensively in a few years but it takes political will from you all. so i ask that we direct staff to come back with plans for slow school zones and safe crosstown routes as a first step towards implementation. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. good afternoon directors. count me in as one of that 80% that would really like to bicycle in san francisco. i bicycle commuted in cincinnati and so i know what it's like to deal with hills. i bicycle commuted through a winters in chicago. i know what that's like. i know it can be done. i am scared to ride in san francisco because i observe how the drivers behave. and so please, we need this plan for safety.

i'm a full supporter. i think it's a great outline of where we need to go and with some of the comments from other speakers with with recommended amendments, i think that it's important to pay attention to those. i want to raise one topic that hasn't been raised yet. people have complained about the lack of outreach and i don't think that's fair to sfm to but i will say and i have engaged with s.f. mta on potentially confrontational topics starting back when there was a plan to get rid of the two with the three or the for many years ago on the geary brt where i was working with the japantown organizing committee. >> once we inserted ourself into the mta, the the county cta and s.f. mta system we had really good working relationships but we had to work to insert ourselves and i

think it would be wonderful if and i think ezra from day activated good outreach on this program by their standards but really didn't not get communication to neighborhood associations of what's going on to neighborhood newspapers effectively when people came into the planning meetings they were presented what do you think of our ideas? they were not really asked early on in the process about concerns and issues and that's an improvement area and i would love to see s.f. mta do that. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hey, good afternoon. my name is hi may for self thank you for sitting through all of these. i know it's been a long day but my comment here is regarding the bike and rolling plan and this might come as a surprise to some folks in this room but i do not like biking,

okay? i hate it because i had to look for bike parking. i had to, you know, compete against cars. it's very unsafe. it's actually not the act of biking is what i don't like. it's because it's not safe for me to ride it and i feel like if we have safe protected spaces that this bike and rolling plan will lead to hopefully we'll have more people rediscover their joy of riding a bike. you know i'd even suggest you know, let's have more bike activities on you know jfk promenade and beach parks, things like that. they're going to remind people that it's it's a fun thing to do. it's also another option for other folks. if transit somehow doesn't get funded, there's no protected bike lanes for me. i will be forced to buy a car. that's another expense that i mean i could afford it but i'd rather spend that $800,000 a month on restaurants on businesses, you know, going to trips to some other places, you

know. and i think we can get there and this bike and rolling plan is a step in the good direction. i'd even suggest to go further and create mobility hubs in different communities like the tenderloin where you can allow participation from the groups. this also includes like you know, charging stations for people in wheelchairs and have enough mobility hubs that you can go from hub to hub and go across the city in some other way other than a car. so i think that's something that this bike and rolling plan can lead to. and then finally i feel like a lot of car users are afraid to adapt because we haven't provided what vision this would look like and i think a bike and rolling plan, a well funded transit system is actually beneficial for everybody including car drivers less congestion because other folks don't want to use it. >> but yeah that's it. support this. i can run fine. thank you. thank you. >> your next speaker. >> hi. who hits a little scary up here? my name is emma. i grew up in san francisco

and i'm a resident of the mission district. i'm here to ask you to approve and strengthen the biking and rolling plan. like so many others here, i bike to work to the grocery store even to visit my parents across town. someone mentioned earlier that parents who bike with their kids are brave but i don't think a person should have to be brave to take their kids to school or to do a grocery run or to get to work on a bike. it was my dad who taught me how to bike in the city even at 81 he's still a strong and confident biker and he taught me to be the same. my friends sometimes call me fearless for biking in this city my friend and one in particular who's like young fit she's a climber. she's like super scared to bike in the city even though she's the target audience for someone who would be willing to do that. again, i don't think that you should need to be fearless or brave in order to bike here. 80% of san franciscans want to bike and i think that desire alone should be enough. so i'm urging you to approve this plan so that even the scaredy cats of san francisco

feel safe to get on a bike and take advantage of this affordable and fun mode of transit. >> thank you. thank you. next speaker. >> hi my name is kathleen and i live in district one. >> i rode a bike a couple times but i stopped after i fell off of a mountain bike on mount tam . i have relied on muni bart to get to school work. church ballpark ballgames and i do live here to just live my life. >> i am concerned with the costs. i've heard that this plan will be funded by the propositions but i don't know if that's totally true. i am concerned about muni because that's my alternate way of getting around and i want to make sure with a $50 million shortfall this year and the

hundreds of million dollars short for coming up that we have that. >> i feel like it's a tsunami and the plan is going to pass. i wish it would be a guideline and not just plan so that it can be adjusted. sorry to take so long. >> we need that. we need all forms of transportation including cars in order to get to our jobs and our families across town. as i said, i live in the richmond district. >> already our routes are cut off many of them because you can't get north south you can get east west but you can't get north south. see as a footnote i would not. >> the most times i've been

scared have been by bike riders trying to run me over as i walk on the sidewalk or as i'm crossing the street. >> so i would urge the bike coalition to please have some education in their in their plans. >> i don't know if they do but i hope they do. >> thank you so much and i'm glad this won't go on seven become like previous meetings. >> thank you. i'm not seeing any more speakers in the room. i will announce if anybody is still in our overflow room you may come up to room 400 to provide public comment on this item. item number 11. >> we do have two accommodation requests. speaker you've been unmuted. you have two minutes. >> herbert weiner i feel that the moderator had not had any input whatsoever and i think that you have to address all parties when you formulate a plan like this and when you talk about outreach well i

think for outreach projects and it hasn't been good they don't take public comment into full consideration and then the plan is implemented over public protests. now the bicyclists certainly have a right to safety but also have a right to drive and i think that before you implement this and you better balance the compromise moderate and bicycle from this board or this agency, then from what the excuse me for moderate you roll out the carpet for and you simply don't do anything except for parking money. so currently they're not able to vote because most of the work most get input from motorists and implement plan

and as far as this goes right now i would put it on hold. yes, you may have worked long and hard on this project but they have worked long and hard. >> this is wrong 30s thank you. >> thank you. second speaker you've been unmuted. good afternoon. my name is george walling. i'm here to say the biking and mowing plan is almost certain to fail. safe streets are a mess. the mta has a 15 million budget deficit for 2025 and the $333 million budget deficit for 2020 say six this year. so for them to you cannot even afford to keep current transit services um in san francisco

the whole premise of quick builds and slow streets is fairly idiotic. they do not work and um you can see this uh was a report that muni is hiding uh, basically they're hiding under the mask of public safety. the assessment team is taking over neighborhoods and spent millions of dollars changing streets in 2014 as they have created a program called visions zero. 32 people have died in accidents on those streets. the ssa mta was tasked with reducing the number of deaths to zero under a geoffrey thomas five year ten year 175 people died in street related accidents.

30s. this means that deaths in the highway deaths and accident deaths have increased dramatically over the last ten years. um we're at a point now where um for all the expenses to answer for road upgrades and safety plans these have mta cannot show that they have stopped even one traffic accident on streets where traffic has been averted but they have closed down many schools and they've actually actually caused accidents. thank you. >> thank you. no additional speakers. >> thank you, secretary silver . we will now close public comment directors before i ask if you have additional questions or comments, i would just like to briefly address a

comment that i heard several times regarding this board being a rubber stamp for or for the mta staff. i'd like to take exception to that comment. this particular item as an example we have heard from from staff on six different occasions over several years and and the board has asked many tough questions and there have been responses from staff that have crafted the the plan that is before us today and speaking only for myself if i have had the opportunity to speak directly with staff and ask additional tough questions. i have spoken with many

stakeholders myself directly and i and i believe that many of my colleagues have done the same. we have heard in in public hearings all of all points of view on this and and i really would just like to take exception to the characterization of our board being a rubber stamp. so with that colleagues, do you have any questions or comments for this item? >> yes, chair i believe director hines's before me though. >> yes i'm in the queue but we are we're already here. >> director hensley, please. works that way. no problem. they did chair and i and i and i would echo your previous attitude. i appreciate that. first i think we want to we all we would all like to thank all

the staff that were a part of this kristy and meyer and other team members. i can't remember how many covered how many hours of conversations you spent in conversation with just me and other all of the community partners who wrote the community action plans and and gave comment sometimes multiple times for oh a few community partners and just thank you for all for all of your work over this three year process. i know it's been a long journey for us all to get here. i do have a few questions. couple about the community action plans and then a couple about next steps and and sort of how we're hold people folks

that can also our community community action plan good good thank you very clear to all the community partners that put them together. i did notice and i brought this up in our conversation yesterday that the community i can words are all structured very differently and there are a couple tenderloin and somewhere that have very specific actions and try and project played out that i that get that clarity based on you know where they are and the steps that they've made previous to these processes. there are others that are you can tell that they put in a ton of work also to them they are requests so sort you feel oriented differently there it

was suggested by one of our our coventry it to both today and via email to include incorporate some of those various other workshops and i will events that the staff and done in those communities so it is sort of general speaking to the community i the different speed and how we thought of the the work back can so reconcile that is as an agency yeah so the community action plans are different i think that's reflective of just the different community groups and where they are in this conversation and some groups have been working on transportation issues for decades while others are still trying to warm up to what we're offering their community led

processes. >> we did offer a framework. we offered templates on how to work together. we offered that technical assistance so that we could develop sort of to a uniform template across the board. ultimately it was up to the community group to decide how they wanted to structure their community action plans and what was most important for them to prioritize and highlight. yeah, i think that that is reflective of how different communities are. we've talked about community readiness a lot through this process so i think that that is reflect the fact that some communities are more ready for these changes that might come than others. so and i think that it's that is something that i think we all accept as part of this process and we all sort of have to work with ourselves on to

where other things are. you you sort of recap i know you did a little bit to your presentation about the school world but it came up a lot. >> so next next steps regarding school that would be appreciated. >> yeah, we're committed to returning with a more comprehensive plan of connecting schools to the network. >> do you want to add anything ? sorry. >> that's that's what we're off that's what we're able to offer now again i think we've presented that the plan doesn't have any funding or resources already dedicated to what we present so we'll have to do the work of finding what that is creating the capacity for it. and so we we do see it as core to the plan of connecting schools but we need to build out a full program for that. >> mm hmm. and then we'll have there's

been a lot of requests for follow up interview implementation. so how do you plan to communicate back both to the public, your stakeholders, your stakeholders here, the people that have written the community action plan before or around follow up and it sort of next step with the community partners. >> we need to develop a more formalized process of how often we're checking in. >> during the last two years it's been it's been a lot we had we demanded a lot more capacity from the groups that i think they were they were ready to partake in. so we still need to develop that process with the implementation of the plan itself. >> i think we'll also be returning to the board and giving updates. okay. >> that is all i have.

thank you. thank you. director hensley. >> director kahana thank you chair. thank you so much for your presentation. christine maya for setting levels that at the beginning i appreciate the director tala for your questions at the beginning colleagues i'm very supportive of this plan. ultimately our bike and rolling infrastructure is inadequate and this is a stepping stone in the right direction. i appreciate all the intentional work and deeply connecting with our equity neighborhoods in particular the character of biking and rolling has changed with e-bikes scooters and other electrified abilities and i do share some concerns of folks i spoke about in public comment or on speed in particular and i did notice that the plan makes reference to low speed devices throughout the narrative and different strategies and was wondering either christy or maya if you can help me and other members

of the public understand what is meant by low speed devices and if you could help educate us a bit on what the maximum speed limit is within the bikeway and if this is something you explored within the plan and want to just go a little deeper in this moment about yes this came up a lot throughout outreach is speeds of electric scooters, electric bikes, the feeling of having someone pass you at such a high speed when you're not expecting it is something that i think everyone bicyclists, pedestrians alike we in the appendix i think it's appendix b we offer personal mobility mobility device guidelines. this is informed by both state vehicle code as well as national vehicle code and in there we offer also guidelines on how to design for varying speeds and specifically around passing enough within the lane so that there's enough space to pass at a safe distance. >> i believe the current

vehicles state speed is 15 miles an hour for electric devices so we'll just be updating that as state laws change this year you know as we we've heard comments about educating riders and educating folks that are bikers that are cyclists and do use different types of micro abilities is this that speed aspect of it again like it's just something that's concerning because folks may do this in the bike, we may do this on the sidewalk. you know it is something that is concerning especially for pedestrians and folks that have more mobility challenges. um is there a way to do like a sort of informational campaign or something like that just to keep that top of mind for folks so that they're responsibly using those those bikeways? >> yeah. goal number five speaks a lot to resourcing people. it speaks to education programs

making sure that we are providing that type of education. how to be a safe writer. it also there's another way to and that's just wayfinding and just directing people on scooters to the to the biking and rolling active transportation network so a goal five covers a lot of the actions and goal number five cover a lot of what that would look like. >> i would encourage the team to go a little deeper this and see if there's educational campaigns that we already have in place that could be a bit more expansive with that education because i do think you know the the utility of these different bikeways is is in my opinion based on how safe they feel for folks and if they're not feeling safe for folks because perhaps you don't have an electric bike and you are competing for space and real estate with folks that do have that, it can be quite intimidating especially for new riders and folks are a bit more inexperienced like me going down to the bike path so just something to explore. the other thing i wanted to

mention christy and i so appreciate you offering to come back specifically around a slow school zone plan and this is something that also came up a lot in public comment. it sounds like the team is is committed to doing that type of work. but i do want to for the sake of of the folks in the room but also just to add more parameters and guidance around this. i did want to just vocalize some guidance here on that front. i would like to see you all come back in nine months with the draft or informational plan for this low school zones plan and i would like to see the formal adoption of one within a year. and just again this is guidance just to create some more parameters and timelines for folks and to make sure advocates in the room and folks who are interested in that particular point of this that they have that they know the

boundaries and timelines to engage in in this work and hopeful that this is just going to make, you know, the plan that we're hopefully going to adopt today a lot more meaningful for the folks that are using these spaces. >> that's it. yeah. thank you, director keena, director henderson thank you chair. i just want to echo what the vice chair just said as well as director lindsay. i think that um the some some of my questions or many of my questions they covered and so maybe i'll just leave you with some comments instead. um, i appreciate the clarity of the presentation and the clarity with which you are have increased the presentation of this plan over time because we've seen it, you know, a couple of times a few times over the past year and some months that i've been on the board and it has become more

and more solid a concept to me over time. so thank you for for that i also want to just commend you on how intentional and how broad the community outreach was because years of meetings and surveys and come in here and talking to us and hearing public comment i think that that is significant and it's also necessary and so i appreciate the the time and the intention that you all have dedicated to this this subject matter. i think, you know, when i think about transportation and what the city historically has used transportation for, it hasn't always been for positive. and so i think that what this plan does or is is the beginnings of undoing some of the harms that have come as a result of transportation. >> you know a lot of the areas

that where this plan focuses on and the community action plan center around areas where it's it's almost like highways at street level through communities. and i think that the important thing for us to do as a you know, as a board and as an agency is to recognize the damage that that has done this the sort of the sensitivity around it for community members and then do what we can in the time that we're here to undo that and then to set up this agency so that those types of policy decisions don't have the lifetime effects that that that we have to then untangle. we 50 years from now have to untangle. and so i think that this is a step towards that and i really do value the work that you did with the community groups to

identify, you know, their path forward or the path the best path forward for different neighborhoods especially those that have not always had access to um to the resources into the agency in the way that we're sort of opening it up now. so thank you for that. and you know one thing that i so one thing that i want to say is that in my work in my work as a houser we i came across the kelsey inclusive design standards and it's these standards that help us build housing that goes beyond meeting the minimum standard for accessibility and out of that comes highly accessible housing but also housing that actually feels better to live in for all different you know all different kinds of people whatever their ability. and i think that this plan sort of reminds me of those inclusive design standards

because it is something that has a specific or particular audience and you know for cyclers cyclists or wrote i don't know what you call the rollers rollers but but you know there's a particular audience there that this is to serve but i think that there also um some unintended positive impacts that come from the that will ultimately come from the implementation of this connected network and and the hopeful projects that come down the road that will get funded from all of the funding agencies that that have the dollar bills for us and i think that that is a super important to note that this is not just for cyclists or the benefits are not just for cyclists but i do feel like that the um the street improvements, the infrastructure improvements, the safety is there for me as a

motorist just as much as it is for someone who's on a scooter or a bike and this helps lay out that framework in a in a in a way that we can point back to and go back to and use as a reference point or that baseline. and so um it is really important to me to just for us to highlight and consider and remember that you know we're all trying to figure out how to make the streets safe, the transit safe reliable. i can't remember how jeff used to say it but safe reliable, efficient whatever you know, um expedient but but most most importantly safe. and i think that this is a really clear path forward for us and a reference point for us um, to to help us get there and i hope to see it before 20 years from now. um the be able to be

implemented and expanded. you know i say this probably every meeting we have i don't ride a bike but i see the benefits of this for me as a motorist i don't want to hit anybody. i don't want to i don't want anybody else to do that either. i do think that when we talk about education that it is important to educate the people who will be using these lanes but also educate the motorists who will be having to navigate the streets with them because i can say that sometimes the um the changes to the streetscape are not always intuitive for drivers who are used to doing the same thing. you know when i'm on my way home i do the same thing and it's you know, i'm a creature of habit like all many of us anyway and and so it may be necessary for you all to also consider as part of the education campaign to do some um some outreach to motorists

or find some way i don't know i mean i guess motorists shouldn't be looking at the phone but you know find some way of communicating to them how these new road how the new you know, shared roads or i think about the um the bike lane that's sort of the bike lane that runs alongside the curb and then the parking is suspended out past the bike lane and then you know so people when they go to park they are parking in the bike lane instead of you know and the meters or whatever i'm thinking about it in oakland in particular but i know that there are some examples here and so i think that it just took a while for a drivers to be able to figure that out and so it would be helpful as you continue to come back also include in that um in those presentations is the strategy that you'll have to be able to reach motorists so that we can ensure the maximum safety and the you know a broad reach

of the information that that you have but but ultimately i am supportive of this very much too because i think that we can't we just can't lose the opportunity to to make advancements um and put it off until the next generation because i think that's when it'll be we have to to seize this moment and i, i think that we we as a community of san franciscans will be so much better off with connected networks so that there's consistency for everybody so that there are the right visual cues and just so that we can increase that that safety and lastly what i'll say is and i've said this to a couple of people but the last thing i want is to get in my car or

take the bus and then get off the bus or whatever and have some sort of incident because you know because i'm trying to avoid a cyclist or a scooter. and so i think that this is really the as you know, a step forward to um just to help avoid those types of interactions to help limit the number of um fatality you know i live in district ten and a number of the pedestrian fatalities in particular have happened recent ones have happened across the district in bayview in this valley. um and in other parts of the district and then i and that is probably not unexpected when we think about you know what the transportation infrastructure is there and how how badly needed some sort of streamline and structure it is needed in the in that part of the city in particular. so i, i appreciate the work

that you all have done and i also appreciate the um out a couple hours a comment that people have given and the and the emails we you know we see it and you know i certainly hear it and i'm just ready to um to move us forward toward and it's aspirational and so let's aspire but let's also achieve against those aspirations and have some outcomes that we can point to in a short window shorter than 20 years hopefully. >> thank you. >> thank you. director henderson. >> art director chen thank you chair. thank you so much to you and your team for working on this plan. it's been a long time coming and you know, i think to repeat what many directors and staff have said, right this is it is not a commitment out of it is it is not spending transit dollars. it is it is a set of guidelines. it's a it's a it's a way of thinking about when we create a project it helps the publi