City and County of San Francisco Tuesday, March 19, 2019

board of directors.

Will you please call the

roll, Ms. Boomer?

[Roll call]

>> you have a quorum.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. >> please silence you cell phones and all electronic equipment. Please be advised that the ringing of cell phones and other electronic devices are prohibited at the meeting. Any person responsible for one going off May be asked

to leave the room.

Cell phones set on vibrate cause microphone

interference so the board respectfully requires requests they be turn off.

>> Chairman:   is there

any public comment on the March 4 speaking comments. >> I do not have a speaking card.

>> Chairwoman:   that is closed. All those in favor say yea. >> yea. >> item five, communications, Mr. Chair, I have none. Item six, introduction of new or unfinished business by board members.

>> Chairman:   I will give other board members a chance to weigh in if they have new or unfinished business of their own.

But as some of you are aware and was put on the agenda, I would like to make a motion to follow up

on some policy discussions we've had before.

I think maybe the most

efficient way is for me to simply read it. Is that fair enough? >> yes.

>> Chairman:   I would like to introduce a motion

to have a parking pro protected bike lane not

later than April 18th,

2019, and on howard street between third street and fourth street not later

than April 18th, 2019, or following the completion of the construction activity, whichever is later. >> I'll second that motion.

>> Chairman:   very good.

So if there are questions

for me or for staff, board

members now, we can have Mr. Riskin to answer them. If not, I would like to open it up to public comment before we have a discussion on that.

Directors, is that okay? Very good.

>> before it is open for public comment, the fire codes do not allow people standing in the room. So all of those of you standing either need to find a seat.

We have arranged for an

overflow room in room 416.

>> Chairman:   okay. >> so if people could take a seat.

>> Chairman:   and I understand we're joined by

supervisor haney here, and on tuesday afternoons, given that the board of supervisors have their ongoing meetings, I would ask the supervisor to come forward. I understand this is an issue you would like to address? I'll take that nod as a yes. >> here?

>> Chairman:   yes. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

>> thank you chair heinike and directors. I appreciate you allowing me to speak. I'm very grateful for the

motion that I just heard which real lates

real lates

relates to my comments.

We have a biking lane in

our city that is

dangerously and recklessly incomplete. We witnessed the tragic

death of a cyclist who was

killed on howard street, which brought deep pain to

our community and

escalated the problem. There are neighborhoods,

that as you know, are heavily over represented

on this city's high-injury network. In the past week and a

half, I've had hundreds of constituents, many of whom are here today, who reached out and urged --

and not just urged, but pleaded for immediate

action to protect cyclists and pedestrians. There are few things that we know as a city, if we do them, they will absolutely save lives. We know that without protected bike lanes, without traffic-slowing measures, people will be hurt and lives will be lost. Every day on our streets,

thousands of cyclists go down streets on high-injury corridors,

many of them in district 6. You don't have to be a cyclist to understand how dangerous this is. If you watch what is happening on our streets, you see people going in and out, cars going in and out of bike lanes, doors

opening and slamming into cyclists, collisions happening, and this is a dangerous situation we're putting our residents in. There are some things that are complicated in our city. I know this is one of the things you all worked on. This one doesn't feel that complicated to me. Fully protected bike lane infrastructure needs to be af proved and

approved and implemented immediately. Where people are cycling, we know where they are, we

know how heavily they're cycling, and we know what the need is. On howard, the full length of howard, we urgently need a protected bike lane. From third until sixth, there is a motion to do that. We want to see the full

length of howard done absolutely as soon as it possibly can be. I've heard that for howard and fulsom, the plan was to get it done in a couple of years. We need to see it done in a couple of months.

The urgency that we saw on fifth and howard, we need

to see that same level of urged see

urgency for the rest of howard. That's what I'm pleading for you here today before any other lives are lost. And I'm asking if you can make efforts to make immediate fixes, enforcing

the law, removing the corner, painting and posting, and these are things that can affect people right now and save lives. I was downstairs with hundreds of people, many of whom are going to come here and talk to you, and the message was clear. They don't want to see anymore lives lost. They know where these projects need to happen.

In my district, on 7th,

and townsend and embarcadero, and, of course, howard and fulsom. I hope we can move with much greater urgency. This is a life-or-death situation. I'm the representative of the area that is really experiencing this.

I plead with you to take action immediately, and I thank you for your leadership.

I know this is a challenge thing, but it one I believe we're prepared to support you on to make happen immediately. Thank you.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much, supervisor, for your time today. Your message is received loudly and clearly. Thank you heard the action. And thank you for being here. I can tell you that our focus in particular will

be on the high-injury corridors, as you've requested, and that has been the focus and we'll

renew that focus as an agency. Thank you very much for

your time. Ms. Boomer, how many speaker cards do we have?

>> 32.

>> Chairman:   am I

allowed to do 90 seconds instead of a mint -minute a minute or two. >> I don't have that capacity.

>> Chairman:   I will tell

you oftentimes brevity is persuasive.

>> can we just pass the motion and they can go home and do their jobs? Do you want to hear them all? >> according to the sunshine ordinance, the

members of the public --

>> Chairman:   if only we were in sacramento again. No, folks, you've heard the motion. You're welcome to speak.

You will have a two-minute time limit. Ms. Boomer, please call the first speaker.

>> harold finley, jordan davis, mitch concres.

>> Chairman:   if you're name has been called, line up. We want to hear what you have to say, but we want to be efficient about it.

Are you our first speaker sir? >> hold on. We need the cameras to

move so they are not

blocking the closed captioning on either of

the two screens.

>> Chairman:   sir, could you restate your name.

>> my name is harold finley.

>> Chairman:   welcome, Mr. Finley. >> what I'm going to say is something we all know, everybody in the room knows, everybody on the board knows, everybody in government knows, for some reason we refuse to acknowledge in any meaningful way, drivers have been killing people on san francisco's streets ever since cars have been allowed on san francisco streets.

It has been a century. For half a century we've

known that cars have been devastating for our community.

Beyond the severe violence of intimidation and

killing people, it is destroying neighborhoods. It is contributing pollution. And now we even know within a decade we're going to destroy our

global climate. And this shouldn't even be

a question of whether to make our streets safe for people. The question should be -- we should be looking at it

as car lanes and parking

should be as rare as safe biking and pedestrian

streets are now. Safe pedestrian and biking

streets should be as common as car lanes and parking are now. We need to completely invert how we think, how we view it. This shouldn't be about making our streets safer. It should be just eliminating the danger.

Stop focusing on car use. Just stop it. You know, immediately.

Just don't do it anymore. And I don't think I can make the point any clearer than that in the interest of your brevity comment, I'll just stop it right there.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much, Mr. Finley. >> just stop the focus on car use. >> jordan davis.

>> Chairwoman:   so, folks, we have some rules in here. One of them is we don't applaud. You're welcome to give mer

finley a handshake, but we want everybody to feel

welcome, and so we don't

want applause or boos or anybody's noise. This is the city hall, open forum. So, Mr. Finley, thank you

for your brevity and your eloquence. If you want to show support, throw your hands

up, but please let's be respectful of all speakers.

>> jordan davis, mitch concord, and duncan bailey.

>> my name is jordan davis, and I live in district 6.

And what happened with

tess rosstein, that should not happen.

I live in a high-injury area.

I live on geary avenue. I take my life in my hands even going to the laundromat.

I do have a driver's license, but I never drive anymore.

I just don't believe -- I

believe that with, of

course -- we have only 12

years left to curb the cycle of global warming, and I want to say anything that pisses off motorists

is a good thing, anything that helps pedestrians is a good thing. Anything that would help

prevent these bicycle and pedestrian deaths is a good thing.

This is also an equity and racial justice issue because district 6 is a

very diverse area in terms of racial demographics, in

terms of immigration status, in terms of trans

and queer folks, in terms of income levels, in terms of a lot of things. And it just needs to stop.

So we really need you to

step it up and just put in

some bleeping bike lanes.

>> mitch duncan and philip buzzley. >> I'm not the next speaker, but can I just get in line?

>> Chairman:   no.

>> do you have a speaker

card. Mitch concord.

>> Chairman:   no, sir,

please wait your turn. Who is the next speaker, please.

>> duncan bailey and philip busby.

>> Chairman:   others that hear your name, please do the same and line up. >> this feels like a no-brainer. I don't think it takes two minutes to explain that protected bike lanes have,

as the supervisor was saying, save lives. They create a more welcoming environment for

cyclists as a better mode of transit, a better way to grow the city, and to handle how much more populated these districts are becoming. I just don't see any of

the tradeoffs in a way

that is meaningfully stopping the progress from saving more lives and creating a more welcoming environment. We can hopefully look forward as a city to

welcome far better cities

that have taken this thing

seriously decades ago. There doesn't seem any reason not to take this action right now and it shouldn't take anymore deaths.

>> Chairman:   thank you so much. The next speaker.

>> philip busby and -- >> is there a reason why I have to fill out a speaker card?

>> Chairman:   sir, it is not your turn.

>> I just wonder because

I've never filled one out before --

>> Chairman:   you're taking the time of dozens of people here. It is not your turn. Mr. Busby, please.

>> that's quite all right. I'll be quick. I just what like to say that bikes don't really kill anyone, but cars do, and we should slow them down. i'm more than happy to put some traffic cones in the middle of the street, but I think that is probably not a good idea. We should act now and do it now. Thank you.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> jane natoli, jeff lush, and laura josie. >> thanks for having me. I'll also keep this brief.

I'm someone who bikes

around the city every day.

I have been on howard and I know intimately what it is like to get injured in that corridor. I was not surprised to see

this news. I'm deeply saddened that it takes another loss of life to see quick action. We know that quick action is possible. We've seen it this week. We can't keep waiting. There are so many more streets like howard that need protection, that need to be made better for people to get around safely. And I just hope that you take the energy from all of this and apply thkt to every other street in our city. Thank you.

>> Chairman:   well-said. Thank you very much for being here. Next speaker, please.

>> jeff lush followed by laura josie. >> my name is jeff lush, and to keep it quick, i bike in the city every day. My wife bikes in the city every day. When I heard the news about tess, my wife bikes

that lane every day, and I wondered if it was my wife.

And until I found out, I was terrified. We need the bike lanes. And we need enforcement.

I biked here from bernell heights today, and there

are six cars in the bike lane, two of which were turned off. We see it every day. You'll see photos of this every day. M.T.A. Needs to do its job with enforcement.

If we need S.F.P.D. To do

it as well, please do it.

>> Chairman:   thank you,

var powerful. I appreciate you being here. >> laura josie.

>> my name is laura josie, and I live in san francisco, and I, like his wife, use that bike lane every day. That is really hard to

hear that news about tess. I thank you for your

motion, but I urge you to

implement a protected bike lane on the entire street,

and the same is needed on fulsom, which I take almost every day. We need a network of safe

bike lanes and not just patchwork. Thank you.

>> Chairman:   thank you. Next speaker, please.

>> joe gurten, followed by

george lowe and savic pradon.

>> hello, my name is joe gurten. Thank you for responding so quickly this past week.

It should be clear to us

that policy-making that responds only when life is lost is not how we should be designing our streets.

I want to add there is an infrastructure solution on

how enforcing the city is,

and that's building a bike lane that cars cannot park in.

If we want to reach our vision goals and sustainable mode-share goals -- when I talk about biking and commuting on

bicycle and on foot with my peers here in san francisco who live and

work in the city, the main deterrence for getting them more involved in riding bikes is that there is not a safe way for them to do so.

And a patchworktomy where patchwork system

where one block gets protected after someone loses their life does not make someone feel safe.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. Next speaker.

>> george lowe. >> sir, welcome. Thank you for being here. >> thank you. Good afternoon. As someone who bikes that

stretch almost every

morning and as someone who is raising a family with young children, why would

like to, again, reinforce this idea of a complete network of protected bike lanes. I would love to bike to school with my daughter in the morning. It is not possible, even

though it is only a half mile. I've also been working with M.P. A. For about

eight months to try to get bike racks put in front of the school. It has not happened. I know the city has put a high priority on trying to keep families here, and

one of the ways to do that

is to give us, as parents, ways to experience things with our kids, such as biking.

And I would also like to

reiterate the point about enforcement along howard.

Every single time when the

bike lane merges left and

the right-turning cars go right, when the right-turn

lanes are allowed, in invariably, there are cars loading or parked in the

merging -- like the blind spots, the merging zones. I see that every morning.

I see the vehicles going by every morning. I've never seen anyone get a ticket for that. It creates more blind merging.

So in addition to the infrastructure, we really neat enforcement and people taking seriously that you cannot park in the bike lanes and those areas.

>> Chairman:   thank you, sir, very much. Next speaker.

>> savic pradon, asumi takigowa.

>> two days ago I was biking on the paige street

on the way to grab dinner with one of my friends

when a sports car zipped past me at about 45 miles per hour. Had one of the cars to my right have opened their dars at that second, not only would I not be here right now, I don't know that you'd be able to

identify the body. That is not okay and acceptable in a city like this. I would like to thank you

and the city for your emergency action on howard.

It shows how we can

quickly improve the bike lanes when there is a bill to act.

It needs to start with protected bike lanes along the full howard, but it

must go beyond soma.

I shouldn't be fearing for

my life as soon as I step

out of my home district. And we need to build a

protected bike lane that spans across all of san francisco.

No more of this piece-meal

over the safety and lives of cyclists.

Because if we don't fundamentally change the

process to work more affectively, we're doomed to continue to advance only block by block, street by street, and funeral by funeral. And I do not want to be that next funeral.

Thank you.

>> Chairman:   thank you for your time. Next speaker, please.

>> good afternoon, directors. I'm a resident of the richmond district, and I also get around by bicycle in this city. I'm here like many others

to mourn the death of tess rosstein, and to ask you

to approve the bike lane bill that is in front of you today. And make changes so we don't have to require human sacrifices in order to get the protected infrastructure that we need in this city. Please make these improvements

systematically throughout the city on high-injury corridors.

About a year ago, I saw a cyclist get left-hooked and get severely injured.

Last week I saw a

bicyclist get adora in doored in goldengate park. And traffic speed and volume are used to determine where a protected bike lane should go, and so on.

In north america we have guidelines.

The all ages and abilities guidelines which direct agencies to install specific types of infrastructure on streets

that have more than

25 miles per hour or 6,000 cars of traffic. We need you to build infrastructure all the way from the bayview to the

tenderloin to the outer reaches of the district. So please expeditiously build out a protected network of safe streets throughout the city. Thank you for your time.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> tofer lynn followed by

martin macerrel.

>> my name is tofer lynn,

and I was a friend of tess

and her fiance, juan. Tess was one of the warmest and most gentle people that I have known.

I think all of us have our

me moments, tess pretty much had none.

What hurts the most is the disproportionality with what a wonderful person she was with how stupid the manner of her death was.

I hear that the motion

tess specifically regards protected bike lanes on third and fourth by sometime in April. I think what people are

asking for is the fully protected bike lane the entire length of full son and

fulsomand howard.

I think I echo what everyone else here said today about needing a network of connected bikeways in san francisco

so that this doesn't happen again. i

I think there are times when we understand that we can't prevent every death,

but this was just colossally stupid and unnecessary. Thank you.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much for putting a personal face on it and for coming down. I know that was hard for you. Please know we will

adjourn today's meeting in

honor of Ms. Rosstein. Next speaker.

>> martin macarrel.

>> I live in san francisco and I use biking as my

main way of getting around.

A few years ago I broke my upper arm in two pieces because a car was driving where they weren't supposed to be and taking a left that they weren't supposed to take, but

there was no physical barrier for stopping them from doing that. I do want to thank you for the bike lanes we have.

The problem is that cars expand to take up all available space. The culture seems to have changed, especially with

uber and lyft.

I'd love to see cushmen cruising up and down ticketing everybody. That would be a good start. In general, there needs to

be a sense of urgency. It seems like the vision

and hazy and off in the horizon. The board of supervisors is considering this climate emergency declaration. It sounds good, but the

question is:   what do we do after that? We really are in an emergency.

I would see not a five-year plan to have a

few more bike lanes, but how about in five-year we have inverted how people get around in san francisco. Biking, walking is safe and comfortable, and cars

and few and far between, and we have lots of roads that are completely car-free. Thank you very much.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much.

Next speaker.

>> charles defarge.

>> charles defarge, senior community organizer at the

san francisco bicycle coalition.

Two fridays ago, tess was killed while riding a bike on her way to work. A protected bike lane

would have saved her life. We've gotten pretty good

at organizing around tragedy.

We just rallied on the steps here, hundreds of us, and I'm frankly sick of it. I don't want to organize other rallies. The truth is I can't

remember a protected bike lane that wasn't hard fought, time and time again. We mobilize when somebody is hit and killed, and then we get blocks or scraps of protected bike lanes. The question I've asked

this board before:   how many lives will we have to

trade for the city to take action? Today the answer is one

more, and that's tess'.

We know that the S.F.M.

T.A. Can build a protected bike lane in less than a week. We have that in front of

us right now on howard. There are hundreds of similar gaps in the bike network. We all know them, everybody in this room. And next week that can be where the next person is hit and killed. Today's resolution doesn't go far enough. The bicycle coalition and our members are demanding that you go far yaind beyond the extension of protected bike lanes per block.

One, we need all of fulsom protected.

Two, we need a comprended

list of protected bike

lanes with the same exact urgent see. And, three, we need to reform how we get these projects in the ground. Again, with the support of the mayor, with the support of supervisor

haney, make the proactive, transformative changes we need for this to never happen again. Thank you.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much, charles. Next speaker, please.

>> simone monjielli. >> welcome. Hi. I live in district 8.

I know the motion before this board right now is to put, you know, protected bike lanes on a couple of blocks, but that's not enough. You don't get to leave this meeting and pat yourself on the back for saying yes on this.

You don't, edward, art,

you don't, lee, you don't, gwyneth, you don't, cheryl, you don't.

Malcolm, you don't. Christina, you don't.

This is a reactive measure.

That is not a pro

proactive measure to make our streets safe.

We need protected bike lanes by default, when the

road is reconstructed or repaved, protected bike lanes need to go in by default.

We can't have, as the last speaker just said, a protracted fight on each and every fight lane. It needs to go in by default.

Without protections, as

other speakers have said,

uber, lyft, they park in

the bike lane, the san francisco P.D. Parks in the bike lanes. It is not just those companies. It is the city employees parking in the bike lane,

making it very dangerous

for bikers in the city.

We need pedestrian and

bike-only streets.

Vienna, rome, belgrade -- they all have pedestrian malls where thousands and thousands of pedestrians and bikes go without any fear of any vehicles killing them. We just eliminated one.

We eliminated a protect

bike and pedestrian-only

street that was only bikes and pedestrians, and we eliminated that.

We gave it back to cars.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> rohan catcho. >> good afternoon, directors.

Thank you for having us here. Like some of the comments before me, I want to talk about a structural issue. He said there should be protected bike lanes by defaults.

Not only is M.T.A. Not doing that right now, it is doing the opposite. Back in October, we had

the seven-hour marathon meeting, where the sixth street project was held. It originally had bike

lanes on it and two car lanes, and the hotel lobby showed up and wanted an extra car lane and so the protected bike lanes went away. On bratway, there is a project, and it will say

it is doing a project of

adding two bike lanes, but stup

supervisor stefani said she e-mailed them, and now they are not doing that. I thought we eliminated

that on valencia street,

but whatever. This keeps happening and it has to stop. Projects keep getting watered down. By the time they get to

this board, this has already happened.

Director brinkman said at a previous meeting that you're a policy board. You've got to do something about it. Urge your staff to resist watering down projects or take the heat from them. Have them bring multiple alternatives to your vote, and take the heat and the

blame for not defending people's rights. And for whatever other reasons. If this board had been voting in October, during

that seven-hour meeting on

a choice between two car

lanes and two bike lanes

on sixth street, what would the majority have done? I think I know the answer.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much.

Next speaker.

>> diana prey. >> thank you. I'm diana prey.

On March 7th, my neighborhood was struck while crossing wallace street.

On March 12th, an S.U.V. Missed its mark and crashed into a home at goldengate. And where yesterday a driver missed their mark

and crashed into a light post at paige street.

I used to be a driver who drove too fast. Here is the kicker, I

wasn't breaking the speed

limit. Stop favoring automobiles. Streets are for people.

Streets are paved by feet,

and cobble-stoned for

horses and carriages, and paved for bicyclists. And people using them have been killed by motorists

for a century, as I believe our first speaker said. My father is named after his great uncle, who was

killed in 1905 by a motorist. People have far too many and far more recent

examples of that.

30% of U.S. Cities surface area, including san francisco's, are parking spaces. Drivers pay pennies to put

their unused private property on public land. Have you been tracking how expensive land is in san francisco, but they're paying pennies for it. And it takes the streets from people. It shunts pedestrians on

to one-way sidewalks single file, and it shunts cyclists like me, like so many people behind me and outside right now, and

like tess, into the paths of motorists who are going

too fast. Vision zero is failing. Build the infrastructure.

Build the now, and educate motorists and educate everyone who uses the roads, and that's all of us.

>> Chairman:   thank you

very much. >> theater

theodore randall.

>> hello.

My name is theodore randall. The proposed bike lanes on howard and fulsom is really important to me.

Within 12 hours before and after tess' death, I rode through the street where

she died twice. And it was really disturbing.

I live in the excelsior, but I can't help but notice that all of this attention and these emergency actions is

happening when a pretty, young white women woman has been killed.

When a few years ago, a few blocks from my house,

a middle-aged, hispanic

man was killed and nothing happened. We know where the high-injury corridors are in the city, and we can act quickly. So we're in the 21st century. Our science has advanced since the 20th century, and we know that traffic deaths are not accidents.

They're the predictable

result of bad road design. So we need the protected bike lanes here right

away, where we have the most traffic, and we also

need the protected bike infrastructure to deal with the high-injury corridors throughout the city.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> margaree

margaret Mccarthy.

>> I'm a resident of the

hateashbury neighborhood.

I look forward to further action.

But what happens next? What happens after this

item is approved? Every life lost on our

streets is irreplaceable. And the injuries done to the families, the scars on the community, and in the hearts of everyone who

loves them, the scars are irrevocable. We had enough deaths.

We can have enough urgency. We already have the tools.

We know what we need to do to build a fully networked city of protected bike lanes. We just have to decide if we have the courage to do

it.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much, Mr. Mccarthy.

Next speaker.

>> sofia gomez. >> hi.

I've been and a pedestrian

in san francisco my whole life.

And I've been riding my

bike along full fulsom, and sometimes I'm forced to

ride on van ness, have is terrifying, and I bike on howard. Between September and

March 10th, I've been

riding my bike and was

almost hit 500 times,

until March 11th when I

was finally doored. I have evidence that

people don't care about bicyclists. Someone drove right past

me and my debilitated bike. When I was getting my x-rays done -- I should

preference and say I'm okay, I'm fine.

The person who was taking my x-rays was trying to

relate to me, saying he had been a bike effort in the '80s, and in an

effort to make feel better, don't worry, this happens to professionals as well. Which I think he was

trying to make me feel better, but made me

realize this has been happening since before I was born. People who made their

living, either by being on their bikes, or even just

trying to enjoy this absolute wonderful city that is meant to be walked, meant to be b meant to be seen, have been having collisions with cars. And that's far too long.

he was making the point

that since bicycle

messengers as a profession has probably decreased, I would like to to point out to the board actually there are more people who are

still riding their bikes, at least in the food delivery apps, and I see people on their bikes all over the place.

I live near valencia, and even though will are bike lanes there, that's exactly where I was hit on my bike. So these bike lanes need to be respected, they need to be improved, they need to be expanded.

I would also like to echo that I see --

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. Next speaker.

>> claire witherspoon. >> I just want to say again what many people have been saying. We need more protected bike lanes in this city. Coming here today I chose to take bart because I didn't feel safe riding my bike in this area in the path I had to take to get here. The other day I was riding, and a car pulled into the bike lane right in front of me, and I was very visible.

It was full daylight. And, again, just like

enforcement for people who are always in the bike lanes.

I'm also a driver, and it

makes me very frustrated when I see other drivers not following the same rules that I follow as a

driver to protect the bicyclists and pedestrians, and it is very, very important that we're protected, and everybody is protected on the streets. So thank you.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much for coming down today. Next speaker, please.

>> jeff yip, elias samario.

>> Chairman:   sir, welcome. Thank you for being here.

>> my nav is jeffrey yip,

and I moved here in 2011 to work at urban "b,"

actually, and I commuted every day for seven years, and I quit last year, actually, to travel the world. I was amazed at how much the rest of the world really looks up to san francisco because they see the technology that comes from all of the companies here. And, you know, companies

like twitter and uber, in addition to AIRbnb.

There is a countless list. We have the opportunity to be leaders in something other than technology. We have the opportunity to

lead the world in urban environment that facilitates driving and cycling because the rest of the world is looking to us. and it just doesn't make

sense to have your process wait for someone to die. You could collect more

information from people -- you know, maybe some website where people could submit complaints.

For example, 17th and harrison by gus' could

really use a traffic like. It is a free a free-for-all during rush-hour.

I bike there every day. We have the opportunity to

be leadering here and beyond technology and generating wealth.

And I ask each of you sincerely what do you want

your legacy to be? It's really an enormous opportunity here. Thank you.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> elias somaria, paige alozando.

>> I elias somaria, and I've lived in san

francisco for 11 years, and biking is scary. Last summer I went to the netherlands, and I biked in amsterdam and the hague.

And it was completely unlike anything I've seen in the U.S. They're light years ahead of us. Everything is safe and inviting. Every street is either

calm enough to bike on or

has a protected bike lane running alongside it. I think we have a long way

to go to reach a point where cycling is something that more than a few

people, more than a few

young, male dare-devils feel comfortable doing. I would like to see us move in this direction. I don't want to see anymore people die.

I don't want to die

myself. I guess that's it.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. Next speaker.

>> paige lorenzono...

>> Chairman:   any of those people here?

>> tom shroder.

>> my name is tom shroder,

and I've been living with multiple sclerosis.

I've been hit 10 times.

I have two screws in my chin. One took seven hours. And another, I was in a

bike lane on polk street, and somebody came behind

me and hit me. No policemen will come because there was no ambulance.

And cyclists and

pedestrians need this protection. There was a good chance that he was on a cell phone, and the police could have checked that out.

I have no coverage.

And if that's the case, I couldn't even leave the report at the police station. He refused it.

Also, intersections -- there are crosswalks all over the place.

But is the bike lane

painted through the intersection?

The intersections are the most dangerous.

That's where the bike lane is painted because the

other lanes are by themselves from the cars.

And I don't understand

this at all. Cars constantly turn right without a signal. They have no idea what the rules are.

And I just want to say

these streets were invented 150 years ago,

and we only had people and a few horses, and now there are tons of cars and gridlock.

This will just stop some day in gridlock.

And over half the people

are on bicycles in copenhagen. People here quit bikes --

>> Chairman:   thank you very much, sir.

>> paige lorenzono? No?

Kisia platner, fiona taye --

>> Chairman:   please line up on the side. Thank you for being here.

>> I live in d-5 and I commute to d-6, and so I don't have a car, and I

get around the city via muni, bike, or walking. Just like tess, I regularly bike to work with a route through an unprotected bike lane. Every single day, and I'm not exaggerating, I see multiple cars and trucks

blocking crosswalks, bike lanes, or intersections.

And it is not just T.M.C.

Vehicles, it is plenty of privately owned cars, and plenty of trucks. Especially when they're huge and completely block the crosswalk, and people can't even cross the street. When cars block unprotected bike lanes, I'm forced to make a dangerous merge into traffic. When that happens, it doesn't matter if I'm wearing a helmet,

following all of the rules or anything. When it comes to me versus a two-ton vehicle, I will lose.

We need to start following

S.F. M.T.S.'s policy.

We need to stop treating

bike lanes as nice to have thing if drivers are okay with it. We need protected infrastructure throughout the city, not just on a street by street basis, and keep people accountable for their

reckless driving.

>> Chairman:   thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

[Please stand by] >> I was extremely disappointed

to know that because I had heard

that the protected bike lane started 60 feet from where she was killed.

Do you know how long 60 feet is?

It's the length of a bowling lane.

You know what I mean.

somebody else today said that bike lanes save lives.

I want to tell you bicycle lanes

save lives but what it means it

stops lives from being stolen.

I had to sit through an all-hands team meeting last week

where I saw my manager,

print-out manager, friends crying. The life was stolen away from

her and I never want to be in that position again.

As a bicyclist in san francisco, I want you to know I was struck

by a car on 11th street and I was doing everything right.

>> thank you very much.

>> thank you, jean

jean walsh.

>> I'm a district 9 resident and

I've lived in san francisco for

years and I have been sent to

the er twice by negligent drives.

Now I have a family and two

young daughters.

We bike to daycare five days a

week using unprotected bike lanes.

We love biking but the problem

is drivers park there all day everyday without consequence and

we're forced to mix in with high speed car traffic.

I have flagged down mtapcos and have shown them people parking

in bike lanes and at most, they

ask the driver to move.

So from the driver's

perspective, there's no consequence.

The worst is that they'll be

asked to move.

Fast-tracking is really the only effective safety solution here. Thank you. >> thank you very much, sir. >> next speaker, please. Further

>> shirley johnson followed by

jean walsh. >> I'm shirley johnson and live in the mission.

So I have been doored twice and

both times when it happened, I

swerved out to avoid hitting the door. There wasn't a car coming and that's why I'm here today.

I stood on howard street on

friday with people-protected bike lane and handed out small

cards to passersby and I asked them, do you bike in san francisco? And the most common response I

got was no, it's too dangerous. That made me really sad and I started thinking about how dangerous it is, especially the intersections, the mixing zones are terrifying.

When I'm on my bike, I come out

behind a parked car and other cars are turning right and it's terrifying and I understand why those people said that.

I urge you, we need to slow the cars down, reduce the number of

cars and make the city safe for pedestrians and cyclists, thank you. >> next speaker, please.

Thank you.

>> jean walsh, barry toronto and

kyle burkquist.

>> this particular death was chilling to me because I ride the same route. I can tell you how dangerous it

is, the cars parked in the way, but I encourage you if you're able and you haven't done it to get an ebike and ride around on the streets of san francisco and see for yourself, if you haven't done it already, how terrifying it is. So the sad thing about this, this is not some third world

country where you have this crazy randomness and no money to fix it. This is sanfrancisco. We are a world-class city and the leaders of so many things in the world. As goes san francisco, so goes the rest of the world and you all sit on a very powerful board. You have the power to change things. We're not talking about obstructed views or all of the other things we argue about in san francisco. We're talking about people dying.

I encourage you to take that to heart. We need action now. Please don't delay and make that happen. >> thank you.

Mr. Toronto. >> Mr. Toronto followed by

kyle bukquist and eva ophosh.

>> on behalf of the taxi cab

workers, my doe

condolences to tess

and her family.

I think it's behooves you and

you need to educate these drivers have never seen a bike

lane if their lives based on the cities they come from or that

the bike lanes are separate paths because they have wide boulevards, wide streets

compared to san francisco.

How many people here are bicyclists ride the tncs, so you

want your tnc to drop you off

where you need to be, but at the same time, you want to make sure that you're protected.

So I think it's important you do

not support the tncs if you want a better job because there are too many here and this body doesn't have the ability to control the numbers.

It's really atrocious out there, because they just stop everywhere.

You need to add poke street to valencia street where they need a better job of enforcement with

bike lanes because it's

atrocious how the tncs stop everywhere and poke street should be added to that.

You need to invest in money to

for tcos in the evening because

after they do the tow away zones, they just go away. So you need more staff in the

evening hours until 8:00 in the heavy traffic corridors to do the enforcement.

The last thing is the electric

bikes. There's been comments that

electric bikes are really more

like motorcycles, mopeds and maybe they should be driven in the traffic lanes because

they're not as easy to maneuver or maneuver differently and they May have to be treated differently than a bicyclist.

We have a cab stand that they're

taking away from us, concerning

the ma

maconie centre. >> thank you, barry.

Next speaker, please.

>> kyle, eva and amber. >> welcome. Good afternoon directors.

I am a cal student with an internship in san francisco. Like cities,

tess, I live in berkley. What happened on friday was not an accident.

It was the inevitable result of

a reckless street design that

gives five speed of space on

bike lanes.

Tess' death is a result of street improvements.

The life-saving infrastructure

gets tied up for years, safe

signs diluted and lives are jeopardized in the process. This is not a problem unique

unique to sanfrancisco. I've advocated for both sides of

the bay and this exists in most cities but san francisco should

not be like every other city. We pride ourselves on a willingness to take risks and a

desire to pass on a society more conclusive and equitable than the one we were given.

In the city was committed to the

vision zero goals, the protected

lanes wouldn't end abruptly and tess would be align. It doesn't have to be this way.

You can streamline the process

for improvements.

Please act successfully by fast-tracking projects and committing ouches

ourselves to a city

for forecast-tracking. >> eva, amber and julie. >> welcome.

>> hello, my name is eva orvack

and I'm a friend of tess, as well. Tess would be here asking questions, sharing stories, linning attentively if the city

had addressed the urgent safety

needs before the tragic accident

last friday. We appreciate the rapid response

to the unsafe conditions on the

portion of howard street and as you've heard today our community cannot wait for another beloved

person to do before a

comprehensive plan is in place.

having lost two friends to bike accidents, I want to support the demand of the bike coalition and added a new point that hasn't been brought up too much, which

is that her death demands

training programs, as well. Traffic collisions by sudden car

door openings can be deadly.

We urge you to contact state officials and do everything within your purview to teach drivers and passengers to open the door safely. You've probably heard of the dutch reach, where individuals always open car doors with the

far hand, thus forcing then to

look over their shoulder.

It's a simple technique taught

in the the netherlands to prevent deaths. If it were taught here, it could

have saved tess' live.

We urge you to request the dmv add training about the dutch reach. Thank you. >> I'm going leave eight letters for you all here. >> thank you and thank you for coming down.

Amber, julie and jodie. >> welcome. >> hello. My name is amber. I've been living in this city for ten years and a cyclist from day one.

I bike everyday to work, which

is from the vizadaro area into the business district.

I take bike lanes when possible.

Of course, it's not always an option. I actually was hit by a car a year and a half ago right

outside of city hall, broke my

collar bone, had quite an extensive surgery, nearly had to

go to my wedding in a sling.

All the while, the driver had zero consequences. Thankfully I'm here and still alive. I think a huge problem which is

strange to think but I think drivers forget we're not just a bicycle, we're not the object.

We are humans on two wheel.

Our bodies are so fragile.

The tiniest spill could be

hundreds of dollars and days

missed of work an opportunities

missed with family and friends.

I didn't personally know tess, I am shaken up.

I'm tess, my husband is tess, my best friends.

I wear a helmet, wear gloves,

I'm a defencive rider and that only goes so far and we need

your help in protecting us. >> thank you.

Next speaker.

>> julie, jodie, jeff. >> if your name was called,

please line up to follow this speaker.

>> hi, name julie woda, I live in outer parkside.

I know how to bike because of a class.

And I now teach those class.

If we meet our climate goals and

we want more people on bicycles, we have to create a network in thecy to allow them to actually use the skills we're teaching

them in a way to feel safe and protected. Outer parkside it is terrifying sometimes to walk as it is to ride a bike downtown.

And so I really encourage you to

take this tragedy and see behind

howard, see behind fulsome, see

beyond to the larger corridors throughout the city and build a productive place for all of our citizens. Thank you. >> thank you, next speaker,

please.

>> jodie, jeff and cole. >> good afternoon.

My name is jodie mederos, I'm the executive director of walk san francisco.

It has been only ten weeks in

2019 and we have lost five week walking ang one person on a bicycle.

Lucy morales, nancy ing, jose

emanuel, janice higoshi and tett.

This is more than a wake-up crawl. We are asking you are proactive and do the following.

We're speeding up the pace on

the high injury network and getting the term safety improvements on 100% of the

network by to 20. 2020. This is where the city can make a life-saving difference now. There are many inexpensive treatments and we know this can happen and this is very proactive. Further because

because we know crashes are happening with no time to waste. We're asking for a cost assessment for all of vision zero because we don't know what

it will cost to get to zero and this is something that makes complete sense. Our efforts, city's efforts

should not be stalled or held up by insift insufficient funding or staffing. We're asking for 100% transparency and accountability

for the high injury network projects. we currently don't have a way of tracking the progress to date. How many projects are complete

and how many more of the one hundred plus streets in the high injury network do we have to go and what projects do the city

aim to do first and then next? We still don't know. We're asking this leadership

body be the watchdog for vision zero. Delays are costly, people are

paying with their lives. And just trying to go about their daily business. We don't feel like we have any time to waste. Thank you very much. >> thank you very much for all of your efforts. Next speaker, please.

>> jeff farlow, cole benefitbrennan and

then nun.

>> around here I have previously

been a lead rock climber.

I've ridden motor cycles across country and fly small aircraft.

I find it easier to get people

in a small plane with me and

find it easier to take a visitor

to san francisco to show them the city on bicycle. Everyone almost who comes to

visit he, I take them in a car because they feel unsafe and I feel unsafe.

Bicycling in frenz san franciscobicycling in san francisco is the most dangerous thing I do

and the number one reason I

don't take a trip is because I feel unsafe.

I was doored on howard street

and have seen bike lanes comes into play after people were glueing barriers into place

themselves.

Today sfmta will cite 4,000 cars in the city of san francisco and that statistics is constant over

a period of nine months. Today, san francisco will fight 25 cars for being in a bicycle lane.

It would be less than the work of any individual enforcer over the course of a day and that is

consistent. And today, many more than 25

vehicles will park in a protective bike lane to go to a

store or just think it's a good place to the car. Easier parking. I would like to be a in place

where I feel like we're not

dragging the board to react to

something, to a section of lane in place.

I'd like to feel like there's a decision here that's leading and

making the complete path and not the patch.

And when do we want it? For howard street, March 7th 7th would have been a nice

day.

>> next speaker, please. >> cole brennan, nun and jonathan gabot. >> good afternoon.

I'm here to ask for a complete

network of protected bike lanes, including intersection designs. I walk, take transit and I bike

but I don't bike as much as I used to or as much as I would

like to.

I don't bike because I'm often scared and honestly curious

about the incessant concept of motorists, parking and loading in the bike zone.

This conflict is inevitable in

the current street designs.

Safe designs are well-known and infrastructure is what works, paint does not. I want slower traffic speeds.

I want fewer cars and I want the safe physically protected bike network that we all know are

possible.

The protected bike lanes need to include intersections and need

to be installed in every neighborhood to help the city

meet goals for vision zero, for clear air and climate change.

Thank you. >> jonathan, michael.

>> I came here one time before

and it was to speak about gun

violence and they said it's not about gun violence. It was about the sport's arena

and the availability to the

sport's arena, when they try to

get there, they can't get there. During an emergency, an earthquake or something, they

can't get there ever.

And we need a green lane for

emergency vehicles.

They're not going fast and poke

street, you don't use that left lane.

If you go to the golden gate

bridge, and when it goes by the

yacht harbour, all of those poor dogs don't have to burn their

feet and we could have

everything and that's everything, a way to get around when there's an earthquake.

You know with the cars, there should be a pause in that door and it should be require ed this they

required thatthey a pause in that door, like a bicycle push

bicycle pump and it opens more.

I've seen so many times, myself

and others, ending in the street and they drive away.

They run your bike over and you

say, you have to back up so I can get my bike out from underneath it.

it's a hit and run driver. You know, these thanks things that I

talk about here in the

supervisor meeting, we are so

lucky to have people like us and others that care.

And I myself up there, too.

You know when it comes to a

statue for who knows who, maybe me.

Because I know I did a lot.

>> thank you, sir, for being here.

Next speaker. >> jonathan and michael, and danny. >> hello.

Thanks for your attention. I work at get-around, which is

located a block away from airbnb

and so like tess, I live in

berkley and like tess, I take

the terminal everyday.

I like tess also share bikes, even though I have a bike. So I guess the first question I

have is, what are we expected of

us who take the bus to the transit terminal after we arrive? What is the connection supposed

to be if we don't have good infrastructure there? Am I supposed to take transit

and get on to a crowded bus?

So what I'm saying is, my

morning commute on that friday

was interrupted because I

arrived 20 minutes later after the accident happened.

It could have been me. It could have been any of the

people who spoke today.

It could be me tomorrow, any of

these people next week, next

month, if things don't change. I also have a partner who lives in the east bay and it's the same thing.

she takes the bus to the transplay terminal

transbay terminal or she'll take

the crowded bart train. Because she biked once on howard

and told me how absolutely horrible it was and did not feel safe doing it.

So she will never bike on it, at least until they

there are protected bike lanes.

This morning I counted five cars in the bike lane and that's typical. So basically, my question for

you, I have a car, I could drive

just parking near water would be hard to find.

But do we want me to drive and

add one more car to the bay bridge? Is that what I'm supposed to be doing?

Should I add more cars? Is that what drivers who worry

about parking want me do? >> thank you very much.

>> thank you so pitch. Much.

>> michael, danny. >> sir, welcome and thank you for being here. >> I'm michael bloom and I bike to work everyday and fear for my life everyday.

I have scars from wiping out in

a pothole trying to go around a truck. For the next month, I couldn't pick up my son. I've been chased down and deliberately assaulted that was angry for childing

chiding him in the

bike lane. The city moved quickly to protect the bike lanes where tess was killed but the city has

all of the data it needs to predict where the next few cyclists would be killed. We aren't moving with that kind

of speed because we're afraid taking street parking away from cars pup

but cars can be parked in garages.

I mentioned my son and I learned

the other day that my wife is pregnant with another child.

I when they get older, I want to feel safe for riding their bikes into the city. There's no reason the city can't

be a safe place of people with all ages and abilities to get around. Thank you. >> thank you very much.

Next speaker, please.

>> danny, drew and jeremy.

>> good afternoon, danny saudr,

I'm a resident of district three in north beach. From what we learned within

, tess was

the model biker and some tell us if e

we just bike in this lane, bike during this time of the day, if we wear this, then everything will be ok.

Tess did all of that.

She met the impossible, unfair

standard that we set for bicyclists in the city and the streets still took her away from us.

So when we talk of standards, I

ask you, what are the standards

of this city, this self-proclaimed city? What are the standards this board?

What are the standards of supervisors who block transit projects in their district and

shame victims? Some have spoken of the leadership that you can show today. I'm not sure I can give you that. I think you can bring justice today.

I think you can bring some fairness today.

But leadership would have prevented us from being here today and would have saved

testimony ess. Tess.

So I hope you'll work with your colleagues to come back with a bold bike plan and real progress on vision zero and we can then talk about leadership. Thank you. >> thank you.

Next speaker, please.

>> drew scow, jeremy frish.

>> I've biked in san francisco since 2011, almost on a daily basis.

I serve on a transit board in

valejo and I like to let you know the power you held, as a city that is a leader in

transit, and I would love to see you lead in transit.

I would love to see a plan where

cars were no longer prioritytized. Cars are not equitable. It takes a lot of money to own one. If you don't earn that money or have a lot of wealth, you can't earn a car and then your options

are public transit, walking,

bicycles, scooters. Those

when you don't prioritize those

types of transit and make them first, you're discriminating

against the people who voted for you, against the people who live in your community. It's up to all of you to make a

difference in this and it goes beyond just protected bike lane

and means prioritizing equitable transit first.

We also have a climate crisis

across the entire planet.

This city will be largely under water if nothing is done. You have an opportunity to be leader and take this forward and try to show the entire country

how to really do transit the right way.

I'm not a resident, but I

I am a resident of bay area city and this follows what you do and I would love to see them have somebody great to follow. Thank you. >> thank you.

Next speaker.

>> jeremy, patrick, wil.

>> I'm jeremy and I bike between

the mission and soma and I

counted nine vehicles which is unfortunately pretty normal.

We don't want to hear this meeting will be adjourned in honour of tess.

The best way to honour her is to

get doored into the car lanes with the protected network throughout the city.

Tell me how this measure will prevent the same death at second

and howard where I begin my

commute home?

Will this measure ensure that

dream force don't close howard

between third and fourth? People keep bringing up how the netherlands and death

denmark built an

excellent bike path.

It took bold political cities to

turn amsterdam and copen hey

copen hagen around.

Be bold and pass a full bike

network by the end of 2019.

Let's safety first first and figure

out the rest later.

>> patrick, wil, and martin. >> good afternoon and thanks for hearing me.

I'm patrick lindly and I live in the mission for five years.

I'm primarily a cyclist and a pedestrian as probably everybody

is at some point, nearly. A transit rider, occasional rider but none of that should matter. This is about human life. This is about choosing to

protect proactively the most

vulnerable humans in our city

instead of continuing to value

the convenience of drivers, the

least vulnerable and that's your duty.

It's a duty of all of us but

you're in a unique position of

power to really turn san francisco into a progressive

city in the realm of transit and transportation, where we don't

have to risk our lives to get

around, especially to help support our climate initiative, as well.

I joined hundreds of people outside before coming here today

and supervisor hainey asked a

question of how many feel their

life is in danger just getting around the city.

I think everybody rose their

hands and some rose both hands. If you ask anybody that rides their bike around the city, you would get the same response.

Ask drivers that and undoubtedly you hear from drivers regarding

all of the projects.

Did they have the same fear of

their lives being in jeopardy every time they get around the city.

I ask you to think about that. We shouldn't be imploring and pleading for this. This should be basic.

The final thing is to enforce.

It's passed time to continue reading on social media no

immediate action will be taken

when someone is walking a bike lane and trying to endanger other people trying to get from point a to point b.

Yet you continue to do this. Thank you.

>> you're welcome.

>> wil, martin and kristine martinez, maybe. >> welcome, sir. >> thank you.

As a friend of tess', I wanted

to share that she was a very embodied person. She and I -- she was a dancer.

She and I danced together

earlier this month and she, I

think, would appreciate if we have been sitting here doing all this talking all this time about, I think, what's very

clear to you all at this point what you need do and I think

that it would be good to have a stretch break.

So if anyone for tess' sake

would want to stand up and move

your body a little bit.

[Laughter]

>> thank you all forking to what you're going do. I have so much hope for the

future of this city, for the future of humanity. You can do this. >> thank you.

>> that was memorable.

>> martin and then christian. And those are the last two people who have turned in a speaker card on this topic. >> hi, board.

I would like to start by

moralizing the life of tess rothstein.

She has changed the tide how we

look at bike safety in the city just based on the number of

people here who didn't know her.

Typically I write down my comments but I want to speak from the heart. I'm a transit ride eb,

rider and pedestrian and I'm a reluctant biker and it's unsafe because

the mta hasn't taken bike safety seriously.

I'm imploring you not just to do this piecemeal but a network all across the city.

I'm looking at you, director, reskin, because I spoke to you during the incredible town hall

and I didn't feel the urgency about building that network and I want to say that's not something negotiable. We need that right now.

We can't be talking about the inconvenience of drivers versus

the lives of bikers, the lives of bikers, ok.

I live on oak filmore and crossing the street just to get

to work and I happen to be lucky to work around here so I can

make a public comment curing during work hours. Crossing that street for me is a life or death circumstance

because it's a three-lane, high

speed, glorified freeway to market street. There's no road diets, nothing going on there and you might talk about the three lanes or

sorry, the three blocks near the

panhandle but we need that the entire way. This is not

not negotiatele.

We need this now.

>> good luck back at work. >> christian.

He's the last one to turn in a card. >> good afternoon.

My name is christian martinez.

I want to say public speaking a

huge fear of mine so I hope that illustrates how important this is. >> relax, you're amongst friend.

>> I've lived in soma about two

blocks away from where tess was killed and I went to city college for classes and there was always a point of pride I

was living a healthy lifestyle

and contributing to

encouraging family and

friends to ride bikes more.

But it felt like no if but when will you have an accident and

how lucky will you be?

For me, the last time I was on a bike was December 3, because

that's when I had my accident riding home from school. I was riding down mission street and a driver was a little distracted and a little bit in a hurry and made a poor decision

and I was completely alert but before I could do anything, I was headed for the ground and broke my clavicle. I've been in recovery ever since.

I'll be back on a bike next week, which I'm excited for but after that, friends of mine are

more reluctant to get on bike. My family doesn't want me to ride my bike in the city.

It's heartbreaking and protected bike lanes are important. When you're riding in a bike lane, it feels like we love you

and we care about your safety

and we're glad you're on a bike. Everywhere else it's like the city is saying, we don't care about you. Go away.

Up until a month ago, I was resident of san francisco but me and my boyfriend moved

girlfriend moved to emeryville and it feels safer to bike there and that's not what I

want for san francisco.

I want san francisco to have an interconnected network of bike

lanes where you can ride to college or work. Bring me back.

>> thank you, and you strike me as a fine public speaker.

Thank you for coming down today. Any further public comment? >> no one who has turned in a speaker chair.

>> anyone else who wishes to speak on public comment? Thank you for coming down. I'm sorry if I was seeming rude

but I was enforcing the rules. One other speaker will be the final speaker.

Come forward.

>> I'm renada cavijge and I've been a taxi driver in san francisco for 25 years.

This thing with the bicycles, I

want to make a comment.

I understand the bikes, they want their lane, they want the safety.

But I'm wishing that the bicyclists would drive a little

more careful, too.

With crossing the intersections, the pedestrians, sometimes they don't care about the pedestrians.

I'm sitting and I'm watching all this. I try to be as careful as I can as a driver. and there's an issue that I have

with the bikes at night.

Most of them, unfortunately,

they're riding a dark bike and in black clothing. You can't see them all of the time.

And they come up and they scream and yell at people.

I'm like, ok, I looked in my

mirror, I didn't see them. They're all in black and especially driving through the park, when customers want to go

through the dark to be dropped

off, you can't see them.

They should be wearing reflecter

vests and the little tiny light is not enough and this is just not enough.

They want to be protected but they need to be proactive

themselves for their protection. And these reflecter vests would help drivers see them better, especially at night. Especially if they drive in

black clothing, there is insane, in my opinion. >> thank you.

With that public comment is closed.

Thank you for a civic and polite

discussion and thank you for following the rules and thank you for taking time out of your day to share stories. Board members we have a motion on the table that I made before

the discussion that was seconded. Are there any questions for Mr. Ma fire

Mcguire or a motion

concerning howard street? If none -- yes?

>> you can go first.

Sorry, do you have questions -- I don't know if this is

appropriate to ask about next steps. We heard from public comment.

>> what I would suggest, if I

May and since I sit in the

centre, we can move forward. Mr. Mcguire, get ready. Obviously we're in inhibited by what is noticed and what is

publically noticed and an outreach and we'll ask you to address that but if I May focus questions and item action on

this motion for now. Do you have anything to say? >> no. >> I have a question on that one in particular.

>> director eakan. >> we heard a number of folks

ask tor howard street to the

embarcadaro and I wonder if

there is an entire bike lane.

>> just to talk about what we've done and in the short term on howard street, the motion today

covers the blocks between third and sixth. I think you know we've removed all of the the parking from the

north side of howard and fourth and sixth we have installed the bike lane between fifth and sixth, moving quickly to get

with your support today, a protected like lane built by the date in the motion says the middle of April, where we will

try to beat that deadline.

To the east of third street, we don't have a specific plan in

hand the way we did for the blocks, and that doesn't mean we won't move quickly. We've heard all of the feedback you heard and more. We know how urgent this is and

we want to get a plan to you as early as early summer to get that implemented this year between second and third and i point to that block in particular because one of the comments we heard from many of the stakeholders who spoke to us is how important it is to fill

gaps in the network. If we can connect the howard

bike lane to second street,

those are two protected bike lanes that will remove a gap from the network no one of the busiest parts of the city. That's getting to second street. East of south

second street, howard is

a two-way street and the design is more complex. That doesn't mean that we're not

going to try to bring you a plan

for how to install parking protected bike lanes there, but we're starting from scratch.

We haven't talked to any stakeholders about those blocks. Again doesn't stop us from feeling the sense of urgency and finally, director, you asked

about fulsone street. This board, over two years ago leg stimulated

legislated a two-way facility on the sides of second street and that project has been bid out by

public works and we should see shovels in the ground this

summer and that does go all of the way. So that's the state of play for

howard and fulsome, east of

fifth street. >> does that cover it?

>> can I ask a follow-newspaper follow

followup-up? Is there an environment or review issue, I believe?

>> the primary barrier -- let me turn this around.

The reason we were able to act

so quickly on the section of howard street where we've installed parking protected bike lane and try to get it done before April is we have been doing a planning process for over two years with stakeholders

on howard and fulsome streets and while the design that we do

plan to bring you for the complete reconstruction of howard street is a little different than the thing that

will go out there and mark this month and next month, there has

been an outreach process.

We talked to stakeholders and we understand pedestrians and loading and especially of

cyclists to say safe on the

blocks in the masconi centre and west.

We need to have some conversations with some of the

fronting residents and businesses east of second street. >> we don't have a designer in

alignment yet, right.

>> we don't have a design right now. >> directors, any further questions? >> yes, just one quick question

and thank you very much, Mr. Mcguire, how on to get protected bike lanes. Where we haven't done outreach yet, maybe we can take this

opportunity to look into

piloting projects at the same time that we're doing the outreach because I think this board has heard a lot about how

it can be difficult for people to envision the projects, even during the outreach and it can

be a shock when projects go in because it's not what they

envision and I know we've so much effort in this agency and

to our outreach efforts. as you said to me, now we need

to focus on the efficiency of our outreach efforts and I think this could be a good opportunity to do that.

It could bring us quickly, the safety benefits, let people see

what it will look like and just streamline that outreach that

much more. >> I think that's right. I think that's consistent with

the message that the mayor gave us earlier this month about finding ways to get projects done quicker, using near term

tools and I think a few people commented on the speed with

which we did valencia.

You used the term pilot and we got a good facility on the

street quickly with your leadership.

But also it's serving as a very effective way to show

stakeholders who have questions about what's the long-term plan. You can go out and ride and touch and feel and what's not working with that bike lane and that's fair to use pie lots

pilots as a way to ennature

engage folks and we think howard street is a great way to do it. >> I can't resist but saying

howard and fulsome move east and

west in the soma district so the

same energy, I know if we can on our partners about a car-free

market street where we have dedicated raised bike lanes across the city without interfacing with private automobiles, still, I realize folks are to get where they need

to go, but boy, if there was ever any energy for that

project, which I've been pushing for since you were in grade school, I think -- [Laughter] >> -- I would love if we could communicate the energy and the

passion that we heard here today to our partners on that project.

And with that, we have a motion

with a second for a vote.

So all those in favour of the motion that I made at the outset of the this meeting, please say aye. >> any opposed? Ok.

And I believe I had some requests at the earlier part of this discussion to ask

Mr. Mcguire or, perhaps, address with Mr. Milk Mcguire longer term projects and I think

we covered some of that. Did you have any? Please, director eakin. >> I want to thank everybody who came out here today and took the time to write a letter,

especially in the midst of your grieving for whom this is a personal friend and colleague. I net

know that can be hard. This death hit me hard because I bike in somark a all

oma all of the time and I think you all for your commitment to cycling your commitment to protected bike lanes and for showing up today and to honour tess. I want to make this one the last, as well. I'm completely, and I think

we're all there with you, nobody wants any more fatalities in the city. I want to acknowledge some of the comments that came out related to the larger network

and I want to ask Mr. Mcguire, you and your team, for a couple of commitments moving forward.

One, I would like to see a

90-day action plan for vision

zero, where we would systematic systematically assist all of the trees.

We know where the accidents were

happening, and can predict where the next one is going to happen

and I like to look at a top-down

analysis of every street on the network, which ones can be

improved with very near-term improvements as the mayor is calling for and have you come

back to us at April 2 with a prioritized list. I don't believe every list is equally dangerous and I would

like to rank them and prioritize

which ones we'll fix quickly

with protected infrastructure.

I agree with so many of the speakers and I don't want another death be the reason we make the change. We should get ahead of this one. We can't be in a constant cycle of catch-up. The second piece I wanted to raise, I would like for you both

to bring us back as the mayor mentioned in her letter earlier

today, a strong and comprehensive policy around long-term safety projects so

were can make these improvements

to the network comprehensively in the next two years. I was impress and delighted to see how quickly we can move and

happy to get the email from the photograph of the infrastructure going on howard. To me it's evidence we can move

quickly if we want.

I want to see on our April 2nd meeting we can accelerate and not wait much longer. I join you in mourning this loss.

This is a tragic loss and we need to do better.

We hear all of you.

>> so this is procedurally under new unfinished business.

I don't see any objection from

fellow board members, so if you

could work with her how to best accommodate that, that would be appreciated. >> we will come back the next meeting. >> we are under new or

unfinished business. Director brinkman? >> thank you to everybody who

came.

I agree, this one hit me hard.

I was on howard street for times in last week so I know the conditions there.

And I think we do need to have a bigger discussion about cars in

the bike lanes and you know, not a discussion now, but come back

to us and can we really talk

about towing cars in bike lanes?

Because if we tow cars in bike lane, that will get the message out. Don't do it.

Same things with cars using the load zones, I've been seeing a

lot of that and some have posts that don't allow it, so maybe we can take a deeper look at that, as well.

We received a letter from zuckerburg san francisco general emergency room doctor this week talking about the intersection

of castro, divizdero and I wonder if we can take a look at that.

He was saying in his letter that

that ways a directing drivers go

to castro, left up walter to

avoid traffic on divisdero and I'm wondering if we can reach

out to tell him to knock it off or sign it.

It's a scarry intersection to cross on foot because you don't know which way the cars are

going until suddenly they go.

So thank you >> there are many communities that have been dealing with this

way that takes people into neighborhoods, with these cars that have never been, increasing

a pedestrian and bicyclists hazards.

I'll get you the cities I've referenced that have tried to

deal with this initial a variety issue in a variety of way. Some have been successful and others have not.

Maybe we need to look at that. Thank you. >> I have an enforcement question.

I know we have significant limitations such, as well for

example a tnc in a red zone they shouldn't be for the use of cameras. Does the same limitation apply

to parking violations?

>> in terms of are we authorized to use camera enforcement for parking violations? So right now the only

authorizations that we have to

use cameras for enforcement are

for red lights, for turns from

red lights that we have at

market and the freeway across

from octaviai, so it's a no-turn and we can use camera enforcement there and camera enforcement for parking

violateses and

parkingviolations and transits. Those are recent attempts to get any sort of expansion of that authority from the state legislature have not been successful.

>> have those attempts included, focused an effort to get camera enforcement for parking

violations in bike lanes? >> no.

>> so it occurs to me that this

is one that we have a real issue

of enforcement and the facts of this accident were particularly

troubling to me for a variety of

reasons, but it's something that

underscores the need for enforcement in the bike lane and I expect there are a few areas that they can tell us, hey, these are the blocks we need to enforce it because of frequent abuse, because of the businesses

that are on the block and because of the interface with the traffic on that particular block. And to me been it seems that if

you had camera enforcement of

parking in those bike lanes, parking this those bike lanes

would go away fast once people got the word they'll get a ticket. In fact, even the sign

signage that said camera enforcement. I realize it's not an overnight solution but if I May request

that you work with Miss Breen and our team to see whether

there might be appetite for some sort of change that is that focused, that focused, and allow

us to enforce the propriety of the bike lanes to prevent deaths

like this, I would appreciate

it. >> are we able to increase the fine for bike lanes? Because I hope we can increase the enforcement and we should.

People knowing the price of a

blocking the ada ramp or bus

zone and that's a pretty big

deterrent and a lot of delivery trucks, they basically budget in parking tickets they'll pay to

the city but thinking of the $72 range, not $200 to $300 range. I don't know if that's possible and maybe you know if that's possible.

>> I don't know specifically. Every two years we do our

budget, our fees and fines, many

of the parking projects are

capped by the california vehicle

code and we can come back whether that could be raised. >> when you bring that report to

us, maybe can bring to us what work we're doing about passenger loading zones and places like that and I think that's part of a larger strategy to get people

from pulling into random places. >> Mr. Mcguire, thank you,

thank you forrering you're doing. With that, item number 7.

>> the director's report. >> I guess the same thing with

regard to vision zero.

I did update you with the last meeting on three fatal

collisions that proceeded the

last board meeting and there's more loss of life. In addition to the life of tess

on howard, that you all heard

about, janice higoshi was hit

walking at levinworth and golden

gate and died five days later.

I just learned earlier today

that a 14-year-old girl who was

crossing the street on john mare

drive and was hit by a car

remains in very grave condition

and as a father of a 14-year-old girl, that's hard to hear.

and so, I do want to remind everybody that we heard a lot

about tess rothstein and

understandably so and how tragic

and preventible and unnecessary that was, everyone single one of

these is tragic.

Every single one is preventible.

So we have for every one of

these -- and I get this is reactive and it's important. That we mobilize our rapid

response team for every fatality, every life-threatening injury that happens on our streets to see what we can do immediately to get something in the ground as fast as possible to make those areas as safe as possible.

There's not always something we

identify we can do, but anything

that we find that might have

some impact we're doing right away

aaway.

On california street, we're working for islands and all over the strict

district to install things and there's a project coming to

the board soon and tenderloin,

we're partnering with neighborhoods to develop safety plans for corridors throughout

the communities, the entire community, the entire neighborhood is essentially on

the high injury network. And I just want to assure you that we are working with the

highest level of urgency and

thank the mayor and this board

for the support and directing us

to move quickly on safety

improvements on the high injury

corridors and to focus and amplify and accelerate our efforts because we don't want to

continue to be in this reactive mode, either.

>> can I ask a question on that? >> yes. That same approach where you

send the time out, the rapid response team to an intersection where there's been a recent

collision or injury, is there a reason we couldn't send that

team out to the 120-mile high injury network right now and

have them make the same improvements?

Don't we have the data where the incidents have been occurring.

>> generally the design of the capital programme that supports

the visions, implementation is that.

It's based on the data of what we know and we've developed a

capital programme to address needs on particular streets and intersections. I think what you've all

challenged us to do is to kind

of get ahead of that capital project development process and

try to get things out quicker

and sooner, even if just to test different ways of doing things.

So we will come back at the next meeting with kind of a plan for

how we might do that, but that's how the whole capital programme in support of vision zero has been built is base on the other hand that data. >> are the projects in the

capital programme, are they designed? Do we have designs to fix these

streets or that designwork has yet to be done. It's designed and built and in

some places planned and in some places the work May not have started. >> I just want to note that part of what Mr. Mcguire said, the reason you were able to do howard street so quickly because the design existed. >> right. >> so if we can get a jump on the design, even if the funding is not ready for all of the the streets on the high-injury network, that would allow us to act more quickly. >> right. Part of what we need is to expand our capacity to do that

planning and design work so that

we can early implementation in the ground sooner.

>> if you have shortages in terms of that design or painting

and striping, whatever the shortages are, that's what I

want to serve and if we need to elevate those additional

resource need, we would be happy to make those. >> excellent.

That's helpful. The only other thing I wanted to

update the board on is the intersunset street scape improvement project.

The project is nearing

completion.

This means this will commence soon.

In order to accommodate that

work, we will have to shut down

the enjuda for approximately two weeks which means we'll be running buses in lieu of trains

from ocean beep to carl and cole

and back. So you'll need to transfer and we will have buses staged there.

So similar to what we've done in

past, so previously we staged it to church. We'll run the end further out,

but we can't run through where

they'll be paving. This is where we the ability to

stage the buses to facilitate the france

transfer. >> perfect.

>> like in past, outreach to stakeholders, we're working hard to minimize the impact to the

rest of the muni-system because we're running a lot more buses

than we normally run.

We have an operating class operating graduating

to replenish the ranks. Irving itself will remain open but there will be various traffic restrictions as the paving crews do their work.

We'll have pcos to help

facilitate movement.

The plan is a streetscape and

this was driven by a muin-forward programme putting

in a key stop in both directions

and shifting the transit stops

at ninth and irving so that the

train doesn't stop to board passengers and then stop again

for the signal, so it should

smooth the flow of muni through the intersunset and of course

all of the nexts have been

upgraded, so as always, it's a

safety project, as well.

So it's a great project that we

thank the inner sunset folk folks for their patience.

There was security, ramps, transit improvements and now the

paving but in the end it will be

much better ride for folks on muni, much better looking area and much safer and that concludes my report.

>> is there any public comment

on director riskens' report. >> on either end of sixth

avenue, one for the inbound and outbound and we have ramps built

so that folks will have wheelchair access.

right now there's a gap from

carl and cole to ninth and juda, so this is in the middle and

right on the other end of that inner sunset commercial area.

So yeah, now the wheelchair

access on sixth avenue on the

end.

>> Miss Boomer, public commenters.

>> nobody on the speecher card. Speaker card.

>> director risken, are there others who had questions on the report?

Sorry, go ahead. >> I want to call out and request that the district supervisors speak up in support

of projects that are not in

their district because we are so

cautious to not step on the toes

of a district supervisor and

push a project ahead over there.

So I think we really need to call -- there's a few projects that come to mind that are watered down or canceled due to

lack of supervisor support in that district.

Poke street

.Polk street, because two supervisors wouldn't support

that project.

The one that got watered down to

the point of why bother. Sixth street was watered down and then broadway safety project, a public commenter

mentioned I feel like it's been

delayed sort of indefinitely.

We have been too nice. We have supervisors who stand on

the steps of city hall and

affirm their support of vision zero, but when push comes to shove, not only might they not support a project in their

district, but they won't speak

up in support of a project in another supervisor's district

and I remember calling polk

calling to speak up because

their extents use polk but not that supervisor who travels the length of that corridor. So I pledge going forward, I will be making a lot more noise

about not just the supervisor in whose district the project is,

but asking other supervisors why they're not supporting those projects.

If they believe in vision zero,

if we all believe we can get to

vision zero, we have to support city-wide vision zero and

city-wide changes. Please stand by.

>> we're very mindful of that and trying to push through it. >> thanks for the thought and advanced notice.

That takes us on to item 8.

Public comment on item 7 was closed.

We're on to item 8, Mr. Weaver, thank you, welcome. Thank you for being here.

>> I'm here to report on the

results of the March 7th citizens advisory committee and

the recommendations.

There were two recommendation.

The first recommendation is the animal behavior policies be posted on muni vehicles and the

transit fare inspectors cite

riders not in compliance.

It seems like what the rules are

is a mystery and there's a no

postings anyone has seen in a

while and should be something every vehicle has in it.

The second recommendation, the sfmta urges the board of

director to support the routing

changes to the 55 dog patch line. That's it.

anybody have any questions for Mr. Weaver?

>> I have one.

Mr. Weaver the seating configurations of our muni

trains is a topic on much debate and we asked if they would provide an input.

Can you update me if that's

something you are taking up? >> we think we started it because people complained and passed a resolution and sent it to you and you picked it up from you. We are interested in that and continue to be interested in it.

>> Commissioner:   so I guess I

understand the C.A.C. Has expressed the same concerns I

expressed when the first trains rolled out but staff has responded to that and given us

options on seating.

I wondered if the C.A.C. Would weigh in on the options. >> yes. >> it was discussed at the last meeting.

>> Commissioner:   I heard you

loud and clear on the recommendations.

>> do you want more feedback? Into this is about outreach.

The C.A.C. Is involved in this

and the early discussion we had

suggested the board was of differing minds on this so if

the C.A.C. Would weigh in.

>> our group was of differenting

minds to the point where

everybody had a hun -- unique position.

>> Commissioner:   fortunately

they have you as a leader to

develop a consensus and show this way. Thank you for the recommendations. Service animal policy is a

tricky issue for a variety of reasons.

Director

director, I assume you heard

that loud and clear.

Any public comment on item 8. Now speakers do we have or

general public comment Ms.

Boomer?

>> Clerk:   eight.

>> Commissioner:   okay. We will proceed.

>> Clerk:   nine. This an opportunity for members of the public to address the

board on matters within the

board's jurisdiction but not on today's calendar.

John par followed by robert chissana.

>> Commissioner:   welcome. >> my name is john par.

I have the privilege of living

in the forgotten zone I call the outer sunset.

A little over three months ago

my super model gorgeous wife the

cfo of her company got out of a

light rail line into the abyss exists at 31st and judith street.

There's no station.

She got killed and came her and

her face looked white and she's

from northwestern european. Ukrainian decent.

She's a genius. She said johnny, can you save us, the entire community including her.

We wondered how a city can

indeed spend $4.5 billion for a

broken grand central terminal of the west where no trains will

run for probably the next 50 years.

Isn't that special?

My island stub designated by

julie

julie kircshbaum had trains running on it.

It's a great place to park your

horses or donkeys at best.

She offered street paint and a new sign. That hasn't been done.

That's an insult to my intelligence. We should no longer be sitting

at the back of the bus much 31st and judith. Build proper station should be

an agenda item at this board. Let's end station inequality in

the outer sunset forever. We're human beings like you like

the super rich fans who get a

brand new station at warrior stadium in a month's time. Thank you very much, board.

>> Commissioner:   thank you, Mr. Par.

Mr. Chissana.

>> Clerk:   followed by nate drary. >> it's discouraging having anything to do with the taxi industry because in all the years you've done very little to encourage us.

However, I read in the newspaper

that the taxi industry is not

going to get the benefit of the

tmc's paying a quarter each

which just by uber will be estimated at $10 million.

That was last year.

In order to pick up wheelchairs

and we have such a simple solution that would help you get

out of the huge $200 million,

$300 million debt you have on all the "p" medallions.

It's simple, all taxis should be

fitted to pick up wheelchairs.

If they can do it in london and have been doing it there 20 or

30 years at least.

It take the burden off the mta as well because you can't pick

up all the wheelchairs and it take time and you need more

busses.

So why are we not doing that?

What you need to do is start a

program to get taxis, new taxis,

all new taxis to accept a wheelchair.

That would take the burden off the drivers as well because it would mean occasionally they

pick up a wheelchair.

And you have to remember the

state law is that these

wheelchairs are supposed to mainstream.

Not go off to a contractor who

says we need an appointment to

pick you up.

>> Commissioner:   thank you.

Before drary, welcome back. >> it's been a while.

>> Commissioner:   you're always welcome back. >> good afternoon, directors. I want to talk to you about the

taxi restriction policy at sfo. It is based on a lie.

The lie of the so-called

purchased medallions, 100 individuals paid hundreds of

thousands of the permits and they did not buy anything.

They didn't acquire equity or collateral value.

What they got was a permit to be

share croppers with the sfmta.

If you bother to wade through the regulations you'll come to the clear understanding what I'm

saying to you is true.

What is also true is even if by

some fortuitous circumstance

they pay off the loan to the credit union, they'll never be able to recover any portion of the sums paid. What they actually paid for say

boat ride to nowhere, destination zero and they can't get off. The taxi restriction policy was

designed for one purpose, the

security of sfmta to protect from the defaults of the so-called purchase holders.

It's self-serving by you for

your own interests. This destructive policy was

approved by you. The board of directors are responsible for the deadly

undermining of the taxi business

in san francisco. They designate who shall go and not live and being pushed to the

edge of the economic owe blivion. It's a selection policy. You are the ones who gave the

order. >> good afternoon, again.

I'd like to dovetail on what he said.

A long-time cab driver has left the industry.

He wants to become a muni driver now. He's fantastic.

He worked the city and knew his way around. We lost a very good cab driver. You're losing the good cab

drivers and the ones who don't really have any other place to go error staying in the industry

and they're the ones not as well trained as andrew. Thank you very much for screwing up the cab industry which brings the next point.

I'll say it again and again, kay

toran is the donald trump of the

cab industry.

You allowed the san francisco

credit union to close out the medallions and based on my

e-mail freedom of information request she lied and failed to

disclose to us before February 1

the medallions would be added to

the pool of "p" medallions.

I drive p, k and t medallions.

It's not helping the driver p.

They lowered the rates on the other types of cabs but we're still waiting a long period of

time at the airport, as the lawsuit state the business is

not increased at the airport. The business is going down for

us at the airport.

It's ludicrous to think it's working. It's working for the medallion

holder who doesn't have to pay to the company but pays money themselves and the drivers who

get the medallions because the p

medallion has gone up. Those who never worked the airport before and those getting

the for foreclosed medallion.

She is donald trump.

>> Commissioner:   your time is up.

Mr. Mahmoud.

>> good afternoon, directors.

What did do you with the 3,000 drivers, their life, they worked

in the taxi industry for 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

It's terrible.

They lost 60%.

I hope this doesn't happen with

the heinicke children's.

Coming to this the master mind

of profit to move the taxi

commission and move it to mta.

You ruin the medallions.

In regard to the credit union foreclosed medallions and now they're on a lease.

The medallions are foreclosed where are they [Indiscernible] And then they're lead back again

in the market?

And these medallions are

fetching now $1300 plus compared

to other medallions which are

$300. $400.

Credit union medallions should

not be as a purchased medallion anymore.

The people who bought them

before 1978 the so-called pre k they're banned to go to the airport.

But if they're banned, how come

the foreclosed medallions are allowed to go and pick up more

than everybody else? This question you have to ask

yourself how come this is done?

After the rule passed in

October, medallion number 672

and 678 foreclosed after that

and number two 1448, 653 they foreclosed.

It went to foreclosure.

10 medallions went into foreclosure after you passed that rule.

>> Clerk:   heb ert whiner and christopher peterson. Those are the last people who turned in a speaker card for

this topic.

>> herbert wiener.

The thought for the bus stops is

make the busses run faster.

I noticed on the el terro line,

might as well be called el terrible.

The runs don't run faster. There's nothing in the professional literature I have ene eliminating bus stops that makes them run faster. Please produce them.

Now, basically, seniors and the

disabled are treated as an object.

They're like pieces on a chess board. We're going to be sacrificed to

make the busses run faster.

And basically we're seeing as

objects not as human beings.

this is inhuman. I noticed in contrast today

there was real concern about the death of the woman.

It was tragic but this board showed their concern.

I wish it would show the same

thing towards seniors and the disabled.

We deserve the same.

We constitute 20% of the ridership. Don't throw us under the wheels of the bus.

>> Commissioner:   thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> Clerk:   christopher peterson and mike spain.

>> I'm rowan cato and I heard

interesting things after public comment closed.

We could levy higher fines for cars blocking bike lanes and a thought the board should be

aware the atlanta city council passed an ordinance yesterday

doing exactly that.

They'll fine cars parking in

bike lanes $100 and truck and

delivery vans $100,000.

And there was also a suggestion

made I think director eaken

maybe who said there could be a study and advocates could tell

you where to focus on for enforcing bake lines.

We have that already because the

3-1-1 app provides evidence. There's a map someone made recently you can see howard street on the map clearly, by

the way, and where the bike lane stops and starts because the violation reports go down there

and in particularly when I

walked over here I submitted on the polk street bike lane there's no parking on the block or on most the street.

there's a red curve and sign

that says no stopping towaway.

They never tow anybody.

Fedex parks there and the hotel

ethic has valet parking in the

bike lane which seemed to be legalized sort of because

there's a no park instead of no stopping sign.

If you're looking for places to enforce, have you the information.

Those are some place to start

and I wish real concrete would

be put on polk street because the first few blocks it's the

only thing it looks like there.

>> Commissioner:   thank you. Next speaker, please.

>> Clerk:   christopher peterson

followed by mike spain the last two speakers.

>> I'm christopher peterson. My comment is for item 12.

>> Commissioner:   we'll come back

to you or item 12. Mike, you're up.

We know you like to wait nor fireworks but today those guys

are on break. I will continue to stall until you are ready.

I can't stall forever, mike.

>> I know you can't. All right. >> I'm still having technical problems.

I wanted to play your voice, the master's voice.

>> you're making me uninclined

to stall now for you. >> all right.

>> Commissioner:   Mr. Spain, the floor is yours. >> I'll give this one up.

So this month marks the one-year anniversary the lawsuit was filed by the federal credit

union against the board and sfmta following that in october

there was an attempt to take 20

260 cabs off the street by

revoking them by a method of non renewal.

At that meeting you passed the

rules that now govern the

airport restricting those 260 as

well as another 800 or so cabs from using the airport the way

it traditionally was. But at the October meeting when

you passed that, kay toran never mentioned these permits taken

back by the credit union were

sitting at the credit union and

if you passed the regulations

you passed at that time, come February 1, they could be put

back out then the street.

Actually, they could have been

before then but for political reasons they weren't until after February 1.

So 180 permits, which she didn't

mention she was trying to right-size federal credit union. This is all about the lawsuit.

The rule changes are all about getting the amount of money they're going have to negotiate with the credit union down by

giving the credit union income from the permits. I've said this before and will say it again. It's all about money here.

It's all about that lawsuit.

The millions of dollars on the table.

How can we get our liabilities down and get the credit union to

get money out of this so when we

finally go to arbitration --

>> Commissioner:   thank you. >> I thought that was the 30 seconds.

>> Commissioner:   please finish your sentence.

>> and I didn't get to play your golden voice.

>> Commissioner:   well, if you'd

like to finish your sentence you May.

>> you asked kay toran when this

came up six weeks ago, you asked her to explain about the credit

union permits and we haven't

heard anything from the director or her about why they're being allowed to be put back on the street.

>> Commissioner:   very good. Thank you, Mr. Spain. >> thank you for the extra time.

>> Commissioner:   you're welcome. Thank you for coming down.

Any

>> Commissioner:   is there in

else who wants to speak on public comment. She'll be our final speaker on

item 9. >>

>> Clerk:   your name please?

>> renata kavich.

So they put the p medallions to have top priority at the airport.

So and then k.

The team medallions have been eliminated and can't go to the

airport which most of us find unfair.

They followed all the rules when they were getting their medallions before the k and they should be allowed to operate

like the rest of us.

The rule was the purchase

medallions and they Ks start in the first slot when we get in the airport.

There should be three purchases and one k. Now they're changing it for

five, six, seven eight purchases

go first and the k maybe one every two hours.

It's ridiculous that they're not

letting us move at all hardly

unless it's really busy.

They're discriminating everybody

except the purchased medallions and they're having a hard tike making a living and so does everybody else.

The airport is inundated with uber/lyft drivers. I dropped off this morning at united and there was something

like 50,000 uber drivers on the top level departure. Some dropping off, most going to

pick up.

The rest of us trying to get in to drop off. It used to be easier. Not anymore. There's no discrimination against uber and lyft drivers.

They can go hog wild as much as

they want to and we are being

punished and we're the ones who

pay the fees.

>> Commissioner:   seeing no other speakers, public comment is

closed to item 10 consent calendar.

>> Clerk:   Mr. Chair, no member

of the public or member of the

board have indicated an interest

in sefering -- severing an item.

All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed? All right. There you have it.

>> Clerk:   moving on to the regular agenda, item 11,

presentation discussion regarding regarding

regarding

regarding sfmta financial statement. >> welcome. Good afternoon.

I'm leo levinson for the san

francisco transportation agency.

>> Commissioner:   does anyone

call you the new senali.

>> no one could be the senali.

>> Commissioner:   the floor is yours.

>> this is an annual event for you.

We are here to demonstrate our fiduciary responsibility by

having the results of the financial audit for the agency.

I have here from our independent

auditors, kpmg to present the results of our audit.

>> Commissioner:   wonderful. It is up. It's on our screens and a

believe it's broadcast ong -- broadcasting on tv.

>> I'm a senior manager of kpmg the external auditors. I'm here to present the audit results for the fiscal year 2018.

I have in front of you the

slides to present. So slide one as part of our audit there were two reports

that were issues.

The first was the pin and the control over compliance report. Both of which were clean opinions, clean reports.

No findings noted which is a good thing.

>> Commissioner:   if I can pause you if possible to move that view to full screen. I think it will be easier for the board members and the folks

viewing at home. It's readable. We're going old fashioned style

here. If you have the benefit of the full report, our apologies. Please continue. >> slide one basically summarizes the two reports that

we issued as part of the

financial statements both clean

reports and opinions.

Moving on to the next slide the

emphasis of the paragraph.

In our opinion we have a new paragraph specifically to one of

the newly adopted implements.

And this is something that's new

implemented not only for M.T.A.

But across the city and county

of san francisco.

And this was identified as part of our audit.

The next couple of slides I'll go over the significant

accounting policies identified as per the audit.

Here on page four you'll see it

lists the significant policies

that we have disclosed in the financial statement. The wishes are consistent with

our information of prior year

financials and consistent with

the industry standards.

And this sane estimate so they -- is an estimate and they

have to come up with the input and methodology to come up with the balances.

So on slide five, M.T.A. Has

three big balances on their balance sheet.

We have the workers' compensation and claims and

liability and pension which are estimates. They do require some type of judgment or estimation when it

comes up to these estimates.

So it's parts of our audit procedures. We design them to ensure we're adjusting the risks for these

estimates.

And this involved our internal actuaries to look at the

assumptions to make sure to make sure all the inputs that go into

the numbers reflect what we should be considered

appropriate.

Of course there's no disconfirming evidence to state

otherwise and no audit findings

related to these balances.

The fourth estimate is on the

post employment benefit for gasb

standard and others have also implemented this new standard. It's the first year of implementation and basically it

requires for us governments to record a liability for their

other post-retirement benefits.

It's similar to peng -- pension when it was implemented. This is the benefit piece.

Some nuances is that and on the the liability goes across different enterprises.

They come up in the allocation

that's appropriate for M.T.A.

And other enterprises to tell

them this is the liability you'll put on the financial

statement.

Slide eight.

This is the overrider control.

Not specific to M.T.A. But

there's aus a risk whenever any as you work on financials there's an override of controls.

To address the overvide of

controls we do audit procedures

such as sitting down with management and understanding how

they're booking their journal entries, what are the results

they're coming up with, is there

appropriate segregation duties? Is there someone reviewing them

and post-closed entries after we

receive the financials and any transactions that happen during the year. Therefore there was no audit findings surrounding our

procedures.

the next couple slides I really

some retired communication that

are required to present in the

board of governance and there's still a responsibility to

maintain control and we do not

opine on the internal controls

but how you would rate the

severity of the findings and if

there's significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in control.

You can see there was none. Page 11.

These the required communications.

Pretty much there were no

matters to report in terms of

difficulties and any significant

related party transaction any

fraud or non compliance or subsequent event making us

appear to the board.

And this tells you what are

management's responsibilities. What's the board's

responsibilities an kpmg's responsibilities in terms of issuing the audit and

financials. I think that's all I have for

today's agenda.

>> Commissioner:   wonderful.

Very concise and helpful presentation.

Excellent use of the visual artist to your right.

Are there any questions?

Any public comment on this presentation? Okay.

So no public comment and no

questions is a good thing. Thank you very much.

Thank you for the concise and helpful presentation. Now we'll come to something I'm

sure we'll have plenty of questions.

>> Clerk:   discussion regarding

transit service. I'm also hoping to be concise

with no comments.

>> Commissioner:   yet, hope

springs eternal.

>> I'm julie kirschbaum the director of traffic. I'm here to cover the 90-day action plan and the deep dive

we've been taking into the subway performance as well as take step back and looking at a

bus network at the request of

the board. We are making good progress on the 90-day plan.

We have a number of initiatives

as you know and I'm excited to see a lot of strong staff engagement and good momentum around the actions. All of our actions are progressing and we're accomplishing a lot of things

I'm proud of and for the most part that is translating into

our metrics. With a couple exceptions which

I'll go into detail in the

following slide and we'll

continue to improve service. One of the places we're not meeting our targets left is on the service delivery, which as you know is a fundamental

building block to all of our

other metrics. And that's where we have control

over the pipeline because a rail

operators come from the bus rank.

I'm excited to share that we

started on monday our largest

rail operator -- new bus

operator class in at least two years.

57 students. A lot of the investment we're making in this area across the

agency is paying off but there's still quite a bit of work to be

done.

On a more positive note, we have

been able to deliver and keep

our momentum on reducing gaps in our service.

Particularly on the rapid network.

Where 88% of our trips are within our headway goal.

What I mean by that is if the

rapid network typically runs

every five to eight minutes.

What that means is 88% of the time customers are not strong

wait more than 12 or 13 minutes for a bus.

On the rail side, we are kind of

hovering at our short-term

target of 20%.

But what that means is 20% of the time we're experiencing gaps

in the rail network that could be up to 15 minutes. We still have more work to do

there. During the construction we've

been watching service on the "t" busses.

We set a goal of 85% of our

trips being within a 12-minute window and we are hitting that

target.

We are not hitting our target on

our more infrequent routes.

We had five in February meeting the target. But as a staff we're reviewing the data weekly.

We review it with you monthly but we review it on a closer time frame. In our most recent review we

looked at these routes and tried

to understand we could do we weren't already doing and last

week we did see a pretty big

bump closer to the 63% on the infrequent routes and it was due

to increased attention in our

owl network.

We're hitting the headway is critical for people trying to get to where they're going. We're continuing to meet our

goals on safety. We're working across the agency with our partner and communications and the safety

division to reduce collisions.

And we have met our initial

target for subway delay.

This graph looks at it from the A.M. And P.M. Peak period. We still need to focus on driving down the A.M. But the momentum we're seeing in the

P.M. Peak has been positive. On the subway performance we're

still a work in progress.

We did not meet our goal for fewer major delays.

We're still hovering around that number.

We saw six-minute delays drop

but want to continue reducing these given how disruptive they

are to customers on their daily commutes.

>> Commissioner:   what were they?

>> I have a whole slide on it.

>> Commissioner:   great.

>> the A.M. Is just holding it's

own is an accomplishment given

we are turning four additional trains an hour because of the

construction project because the

k line is turning at embarcadero.

We continue to see it as a huge opportunity.

The muni we discovered after

spending a bit of management

time last week is a need to get

trains leaving the subway off

the embarcadero platform faster because they're then blocking

everything else trying to come around. We're re-emphasizing that as a

critical need. I know I said I didn't think

we'd see a lot of movement on

this average travel time but in addition to significantly addressing the variability, we

saw a minute drop on the average

travel time in the P.M. Peak

from embarcadero to west portal.

As well as an improvement in the

P.M. Pake for have aability.

-- P.M. For the availability and that's something we ton focus on and needs more

attention. There's a lot of progress at the end of the plan. I'll drip down deeper into what

we've been able to achieve.

One thing I wanted to bring your attention to specifically is we

reached a major milestone when

we rolled out the new harris

radio on the L.R.V.S.

What that allows us to do is move in the transportation management center. We're no longer trying to manage

service in two locations.

Where we have the "f" line and

busses where we have the two stations is challenging and a

drain on resources.

Some of the immediate benefits

is we have clearer audio when we talk to operators.

We dot no have dead spots. There's time where we'd have to send station agent down to connect with operators because they couldn't here us.

We have crisper communication

both with our field staff on the

new radio as well as with our operators. We have customer and stop announcement. We are still working hard to try

to adjust the audio on the stop announcements. overscrawl

overall they're too quiet and

you May have a staff announcement echo and that's something we're working through in the next week or so. It is a critical milestone and

within the next couple of weeks

we'll be moving rail to our

modern transportation center.

That's the good news.

We also did have several major subway delays since February

19th I did want to make sure we

talked about as a group.

Some of which ed provided

details on at the last meeting.

Our most disruptive delay was on

February 28 where the automatic train control system stopped and

we had a failure of all three computers.

The issue was caused by a glitch in the software and they're working on a repair. We have put in a procedure in

place so we won't have the situation again.

I do want to emphasize this is -- we had the potential of this for all 20 years of having this software. We've never seen this issue

before.

Because we were having a switch communication issue, every train that came into the subway was

coming in as a non-communicating

train and the intensity of so

many non-communicating trains

triggered this rare issue we didn't previously know we had. We've taken steps to avoid it. We're in the process of fixing

it but it's not something where I believe we're at risk for

moving forward.

>> Commissioner:   this is where trains were coming in and not

acquiring the system and we had

a stack of non-acquiring? Did they operate in manual or fix the acquisition? >> we were able to fix the acquisition issue but the short

period where they were non-communicating

non-communicating --

>> Commissioner:   that's the stacks of dots on the map? >> yes.

We also had a train lock up at

embarcadero in part user error

and we followed up training and

we had a delay at west portal caused by a safety violation we have addressed for the individual but also are working

to address with all operators. This say location we have seen

an increase in signal violations since the twin peaks project.

We want to make sure our

operators and inspectors

understand how that intersection works. Then March 8, we had an issue

where we had to evaluate the montgomery station because of heavy smoke.

The smoke was caused by arcing on the train and this is shown

in the photo here.

The carbon bolts were holding and fell down and burn the top of the train.

We have inspected our entire

fleet and we continue to do so weekly.

This is an issue that we will

put in a design improvement to

address.

Moving on to our bus network. As you guys know, san francisco

has a fantastic but network. Over half a million people board

it every day.

It's powered by electricity and renewable diesel.

It's the greenest fleet in north america and it's not just a

daytime network but something

people use 24 hours a day.

We have seen a tremendous number

of positive trends on the bus system.

The most notable in my tenure has been the vehicle reliability.

We went from tracking vehicle

breakdowns in the hundreds of

miles or thousand miles to now

routinelily seeing 10,000 plus

miles between breakdowns.

I'm really excited we're going minnesota on thursday and we're

actually going to launch the

last hybrid of this procurement as it leaves the plant. That's a really exciting milestone. We'll have a similar celebration

this fall when the last trolly

leaves as well.

The fleet program got to this level because of a very

deliberate redesign of our fleet

procurement process. The first and most important is that we needed to space out our

procurements. If you buy everything at the same time, it's all new and the

same time, it's all old at the same time. If have you one problem, you

have 1,000 problems so spacing it out is important.

In the recent round we got

halfway there and over the next 12 years we'll continue that.

The goal is to have 75 to 100

busses per year be purchased on

a regular basis so you always have an average age of five to six years. The second critical piece we met

is our commitment to meet or

exceed the preventive maintenance program of the manufacturers.

If you're going to buy a nice

expensive bus, you have to keep it nice.

The third piece we historically

have not done on our fleet is to

do a good midlife overshawl -- overhaul and make sure the

components of the bus that can't

last the body of the bus have a

rebuild so it's as reliable in

year 12 as two. This is a graph. The red line shows the

performance we're get ong -- getting on the older fleet.

This is no the credit of our bus

maintenance folks. You can see we more than doubled the performance on the new

fleet.

A second area we don't talk about is we've transformed how we manage our service.

We have a performance group

constantly monitoring what the headway and on-time performance

is on our routes.

They feed that information to our transportation management

center that has new and improved

rules to monitor gaps and bunching and they communicate

that out to our folks in the field that can provide

additional support managing terminals or tough pinch points. We also over the last two years have started a new position

which is a field manager position. That's like a general manager of the street.

It's why I'm able to do this job frankly. I can go to sleep at night

knowing there's somebody who has extensive experience handling

very complicated types of incidents and I'll have a report the minute I wake up about what happened and what if anything we need to do differently to keep

ourselves safe and reliable.

Then the third think exciting

thing we're seeing on the bus

side and system wide is that we even despite our operator

shortage, we still are

delivering more service than we have in the last 10 years.

Our service levels, the blue

line is a service delivery shows

a 20% increase since 2010.

We still have lines that are crowded. There's certainly areas we want

to continue to invest in.

The fact that we are keeping up with our ridership growing I think is positive.

>> Commissioner:   said 20% since 2010. Do you have a sense of the population increase not just the

residential but the daily population?

I would suspect it's probably a similar number. >> as would I.

I don't have the exact statistics at my finger tips.

But we have seen job increases

and job dense ifying.

>> Commissioner:   a 20% increase in service over 10 years sounds great and I'm happy about that

but we need to keep in mind we

have increased demand the same

way.

We won't be able to plateau.

I see skyscrapers and want ads

and folks coming still.

Especially, as you say, as jobs

and maybe homes densify there'll

be greater reliance on muni.

Please continue. >>ing >>ing

>> unlike rail where we face

small and nuanced problems on bus we have challenge. The first is the operator

shortage and the second is congestion.

On the operator shortage, I am

optimistic about the progress

we've made though we need to continue the trajectory. On monday we start the largest class we've had in years.

We've also been partnering with

the mayor's office of economic

and workforce development particularly on helping folks

get their class b permit. We opened a list in March and will continue to open a list

every two months which is really unprecedented for us. There was a time where we'd open

a muni list once a year and that

would be enough to fill classes.

Opening it up every two months

and have specific dates so non-profits an other partner that help us recruit operators

can plan for that is what we're

going to be doing for both May,

June and I believe August.

We currently have about 300

candidates on our eligible list.

In order for them to be new operator candidates they need a

class b permit which we previously expected folks to do on their own.

In partnering with the city

drove program, we've now been able to offer everybody on the

list an access to this free

program if they want support to

get the class b permit. We are seeing many people take

them up on that opportunity.

So we're excited for these new approaches and we're going to

continue to try things to solve the challenge, which at this point is primarily a pipeline

problem.

As I said, the second hurdle is congestion. While transit speeds are not degrading at the same rate all

the speeds are, we are still

seeing impacts particularly on

routes where we don't have

protection federal traffic.

Our 15-minute routes and 20-minute routes going through

the downtown area.

Where we have invested in

transit priority, we have seen big dividends.

We have worked closely with our

partner in the pedestrian and

bike programs. San

the projects not necessarily bus projects

projects like seventh and

eighth street have boarding islands which help reduce delay

and the same synergy in the forward projects where we make an investment in the rapid network we look at what pedestrian safety enhancements

we can do to improve and meet overall agency goals.

We are seeing wherer -- where we

are making investments a

ridership in improvement and we're seeing a drop in ridership but on the corridors where we

made investments in transit only lanes and larger vehicles we're seeing an 8% increase in ridership. So in terms of next steps for the bus network, we very much want to build on our successes.

We want to continue to bring you

and the community more moving forward projects.

Over the next year one portal

we'll start on is downtown mission.

that's an area where we're

travelling extremely slow and congested areas. Continue fleet replacement and increase use of our gap management tools.

As I said before, we're at the

beginning of understanding how to use these tools and communicate with operators while

they're on the road to make the small adjustments to not catch up to the busses in front of

them or not create the big gaps. We're also continuing to tackle the tough problems.

We have a huge agency priority around operator hiring.

And as we work towards the city wide load share goals I think

we'll see positive trajectories

around congestion and the other challenges we're facing. That concludes my presentation.

>> Commissioner:   any public

comment on item 12, Ms. Boomer.

>> Clerk:   Mr. Chair, christopher peterson.

>> Commissioner:   Mr. Peterson,

gou first and then Mr. Wiener. Thank you for waiting this out.

>> you're welcome. A couple comments.

First, thank you to the mune

I for

having P.C.O.S and sometimes they're giving muni priority but not consistently. Frequently I'm seeing them

though we've been waiting in the tunnel and letting cars go through while trains are waiting

to get out of the station. I hope there continues to be

management focus on really

genuinely giving muni priority there. Another bottleneck outside the

tunnel I think can have impacts

on metro service in the tunnel

is st. Francis circle.

Both the "k" and the "m" go through that intersection.

You have one train and you can get through quickly.

If it's unlucky with the timing

it has to wait through an entire cycle.

Have you multiple complicated

car movements in that intersection easily waiting several minutes. If you have multiple trains

getting there, that thing gets multiplied.

If have you outbound Ks and Ms stack up behind them, maybe

they've waited 5 minutes to get

out of west portal and another

10 to 15 minutes in st. Francis circle. I hope muni can give focussed

attention in terms of giving the

"k" and "m" priority and getting

through st. Francis circle in a

more timely manner.

>> Commissioner:   thank you. Mr. Wiener.

>> I noticed my name is spelled

the same way scott wiener's and

it should be w-e-I-n-e-r.

I think the goal of muni should be service delivery should match

the density of the city.

Now, for decade ago this was the case.

You had a comprehensive system.

Now you're stripping services

from the neighborhood and

focussing on the most

heavily-used line. This is a supply and demand principle instead of services meeting actual need. I appreciate the addition of

coaches but I wonder how many

have been taken from the neighborhoods.

So in essence you have a zero sum solution.

what we need to do is beef up the services and have more

coaches than ever before and

that also consists of restoring eliminated bus stops and runs.

For instance, at 26 valencia

used to run to st. Luke's hospital from downtown and ran to the merced extended

neighborhood triangle district. It doesn't do that anymore.

You don't have a direct link with downtown. I don't live in that area but I know people who do and they share that concern.

So basically, you have to constantly expand services in order to meet density. That means meeting need.

Right now the way the muni

forward is is like amputating

the toes and grafting them to a kneecap to a printer to make him run faster.

-- sprinter to make him run faster. That's crazy. The overall delivery system is not good at the present time. I don't see a significant change in improvement. Thank you.

>> Commissioner:   thank you very much. Any further public comment on

item number 12?

Seeing none, I have a few

questions for Ms. Kirschbaum. Are there others that would like to address anything? Director eaken.

>> I have two questions for today.

One, I heard a lot of concerns

about the switchbacks on the "t" run and a know we're doing those.

I believe as part of trying to fill service gaps but I think

there's equity implications of

the switchbacks not making it so

I wonder if you can talk about that a little bit, one.

And two, you talked about

congestion as a key barrier and a loved the slide that shows the different types of busses we

have.

I think we have five rapid lines

of the lines.

We've celebrate the success of the rapid lines. I wonder if the long-term solution when you think of getting busses out of traffic is

a long-term solution it take the five routes and make more and

more especially those of the 72

stuck in traffic to do more dedicated bus only lanes or do

you believe the solution is

something more system wide to

address the bus routes that

aren't currently served with a

dedicated line to reduce

congestion more holistically.

>> we have made a commitment to eliminate switchbacks other than

a line blocked or mechanical failure. Starting April 6.

We chose that date because we'll

be done with the construction we

currently have busses on the "t"

line and we'll be implement new

schedule win -- with additional running time we believe say

primary driver of our need to switchback throughout the system.

We suspect the overall system

will become healthier as we add

in additional running time.

It's not what I ideally like to

do but if our schedules don't

reflect the reality, we create reliability problems. So we're always working on two paths.

what can we to to improve the train speeds and then making

sure we have accurate schedules.

So we'll be looking this year in addition to downtown mission,

we'll also be looking at the j line and some opportunities to

do some of these leaning forward

investments in that corridor.

In order to have transit

priority treatments, I don't

think you necessarily need to be

a rapid line. I think a lot of the treatments

that we do to prioritize busses

and trains work for a lot of different types of service.

A rapid route really only works

on a corridor that has really frequent service like four or five-minute combined service.

The reason is if you're going to

split out into two type of service, a local and rapid you need them both to come frequently or nobody's going to wait for the other.

We constantly get requests like

why can't we have a rapid on the

29 and sunset or a rapid on the 7/haight.

Part of it is there's not an

overall density in service types.

I think one area we in general

haven't cracked is how do we protect the infrequent routes from traffic.

Routes where we can't justify

take whole lane of traffic for a 15-minute route.

There's just not enough

frequency of use so what other

things can we do in the system

to help replicate the free flow speed is what we'd ultimately be looking at.

>> Commissioner:   anything

further? Director hsu.

>> thank you, this is helpful.

I think it's great you have the training program because it's

important in getting people to switch when jobs change because

of technology or mode shifts.

I'm curious of the 57 in the new class, how many came from chariot and do we have a sense

how many of that bump May keep

us with a positive momentum for a while?

If we know that.

>> I'll invite our acting H.R. Director.

>> I'm derek kim the current

acting H.R. Director for sfmta.

Approximately 18 came from chariot. We feel that so far the city

drive program with the b permit has been extremely helpful.

It's been one of the biggest

road blocks for people to become transit operators.

>> and do we know of the people

who come in through the "b" permit program how many do we end up getting?

I'm sure some end up choosing different paths after they have

the license. >> we just start the program.

We did a first small pilot in

January and a ramp up when

chariot went down starting in February. I don't think we know yet but

the idea generally is that to the extend we are supporting the

program it would be supporting

for folks who would apply from

muni operator jobs.

>> Commissioner:   so we'd expect a high return from the people who participate? >> that's our expectation but the first class just got through

in February.

It hasn't been there long enough to answer.

>> Commissioner:   Mr. Torres.

>> Mr. Kim, of the follow-up on the chariot, how many of the drivers that signed up are former taxi cab drivers that lost their medallions or wanted

to change to becoming drivers?

>> I apologize but that I do not know.

I don't know who were former cab drivers.

>> Commissioner:   I think it's important to find out because a

lot of the complaint I've been hearing have come from cab drivers that we've done so much bad things to them, which I don't think so, but here's an

opportunity to recruit them that May need a job and I can't think of anybody better than a cab driver who knows the city. Just a thought. >> we'll follow-up. >> thank you. Secondly, when you say you're

going to minneapolis --

>> our busses our manufactured

in st. Cloud, minnesota.

>> Commissioner:   why is that?

>> to meet with new flyer our bus manufacturer and going specifically to celebrate the

last hybrid being leaving the

plant as well as to work through some ongoing warrant issues.

>> Commissioner:   so when you're there, how many staff people are going? >> I believe we're bringing four

staff people.

>> Commissioner:   and their responsibility will be to

inspect the busses? >> yes.

>> Commissioner:   so they'll look at issues like seating and things we've had problems with? >> on the busses?

>> Commissioner:   yes. >> they'll be looking to make

sure the vehicles are leaving at the high standard we expect.

>> Commissioner:   so if they do

not, do you reject the busses at that point? >> we hold them at the plant

until the issues are addressed.

>> Commissioner:   thank you.

>> Commissioner:   thank you, Ms. Kirschbaum. I have a few questions but I

appreciate the detail and appreciate the overall metric of the time in subway because I

think it's a tangible thing and

happy to see the average has gone down on one side.

So we've seen a drop in the A.M. Peak but not P.M.

An he'd ya -- any idea of the difference?

>> I think the P.M. Was affected

by the west portal bottleneck

we've been able to address.

I think the A.M. Peak problems

tend to be related to other

issues like non-communicating trains or trains in manual slowing down the trains behind

them as well as the turnaround at embarcadero.

So we have not had as much as

success in the A.M. Peak issues we're having in the P.M. Peak issues.

>> Commissioner:   that suggest to

me that maybe the issue is west

portal both sides is different things. In the A.M. It's acquisition of

the train control system and related things where you come in and P.M. It's coming out and you solved the outflow issue but we

still have an in-flow issue. Is that fair? >> yes.

But specifically where we're seeing that materialize is not at the west portal end of the line in the morning. It's at the downtown stations where we're seeing trains backed

up one on top of the other.

>> Commissioner:   right. That's how it manifests out but still the acquisition issue has

occurred at west portal.

So one of the things that's

interesting to me and I'm

channelling my inner Mr.

Mr. Peterson is how it plays a role. At an earlier meeting I raised

the question of just closing that intersection to traffic during peak period or altogether.

It's not a thoroughfare you could force right and left turns

there and still have good flow to the business corridor and

folks trying to get across have

alternatives up the street at

dewy and 14th. Has there been further

consideration to close traffic that cross the train tracks.

>> my apology for not addressing it in the presentation.

We have pulled together a rapid

team of engineers and planners to look at the type of solutions you're recommending and start

testing some things to see how

they help at that intersection. We should within the next few

weeks have some progress on that item.

>> Commissioner:   that's my neighborhood. I know the folks affected but I

think if we can create the ripple effect in the system it

could be a compelling case why

we would close an intersection.

It might potentially lead to greater pedestrian safety near the library, playground and elementary school.

Next question, the new radio systems come into play.

Within the new radio systems,

will the command center have the

ability to communicate to all passengers in the trains? >> yes.

>> Commissioner:   that's a more

efficient way of communicating

with our customers then to the driver and having the driver say what's going on.

If there's a system wide problem affecting everyone on the system, let's please have

system-wide announcement. If you have a question you can ask your driver or station agent

but leaving it to each independent driver is not an effective effective in my view to deal

with those sorts of situations.

The congestion issue, I was

thinking back to my bus rides it's an issue. We're moving to three dedicated bus lines or streets.

We have two B.R.T.S coming on

through some dirt around with

you to start one and hopefully

market street will be soon no

private vehicles.

Are there other streets, major corridors.

I'm thinking east west, north,

south in my head where we should

be seeking to achieve this even

if it's not dedicated.

What I see is we have a red

carpet lane on geary and cars are coming into it. There's congestion, there's other issues. Are there other streets we should be considering where we

just make them red carpet only

and really make the entire street no private vehicles other than perhaps taxi and deliveries.

I realize that's a grand thing

but we were challenging earlier to be policy makers and if congestion is the problem

slowing the busses down, not a

lack of bus or coaches just too

many cars in the way, we are disincentivizing people to take the bus.

In dissatisfaction to the robust

plans we have about B.R.T. And market street we could look at what corridors that aren't that

great for car flow in the first

place and make them entirely red

car carpet. Could be during peak hours or all-time service. There's many streets that flow

that are narrow but nevertheless flow really well, east and west and north and south.

Turk street comes to mind for me.

I would suggest the highest

priority let's consider how

we'll address this congestion

issue more boldly and reward people for riding the bus and

give them the above ground

subway on more than the three routes and final in switching to H.R. I'm thrilled about the

acquisition of the new drivers. This is a new group of drivers

recruited at a large segment at once. It's not just about hiring them

but retake -- retaining them.

Let's please make sure to follow the hiring program and retention program to make sure and see if

these people are encountering

specific issues or whatever and

make sure we're retaining them as well. Okay.

We'll have another report next month. >> yes.

>> Commissioner:   we haven't

scared you away? Invigorated you and challenged you.

>> that's what I'm about.

>> before we let her go, can I say I love the idea of creating

some streets that are red carpet

lanes for bus where's maybe we don't have a lot of cars and can make a lot of impact.

Keep in mind we can keep those streets that function for bicycles, busses an pedestrians

and just deprioritize private car traffic.

I'm sure we have a lot of streets like that in the city

that can make a huge impact and

let's be transit first and bicycle first and pedestrian

first and deprioritize some cars on streets in the city. You'll get around just fine,

director torres.

>> Commissioner:   a little

insight to our board of directors.

All items 13 and 14 together, please, Ms. Boomer.

>> Clerk:   13 proven contract

modification 14 to radio system

replacement project designed

with harris corporation do add

design work and repair fiber

optic cable in the twin peaks

tunnel and start a warrant

amount to increase the contract

amount for a total amount of not

to seed $92,641,000.

Number 14 is approving contract

2018-49 as needed professional

services with conduent transport

solutions to provide as-needed

services to support the computer

aid dispatch system and an automated vehicle location system functions of the muni radio system for a contract

amount not to exceed $7,000 for a term of five years.

>> I'm the technology officer

for the sfmta for the project and I'm excited to be able to present this to you today because we just did our final

cut over for the radio system

within the rail and it was done

a year and a half ago and we're

now moving into the more clean

up and operationalizing the overall system within the

vehicles and the back end.

So within that along with

conduent the acquisition of new

tools to better enable the team

to manage the fleet are from cond

conduent part of the overall

radio implementation but a subcontractor to the harris organization.

We wanted to make sure we had a

stand-alone contact with the conduent team to allow us to

increase functionality as needed

to allow us to make certain tweaks to the system as needed because harris not the software

vendor of the system.

We'll also move from the harris

1240 contract and defining our substantial completion with the

turn over and cut over of the rail system substantial completion will move us directly

into warranty of that system and you'll see a stand alone

contract coming your way to move

the warranty to a stand-alone to

close off the contract.

This is enabling us since we have substantial use of the

system to clean up the project

contact and moving to closure

once other things are done.

Twin peaks repair was in the

west portal tunnel when the

contractors cut one of our fiber cables that was serving our

backup because we have redundancy in the backup and

needed that repaired

expeditiously and wanted to facilitate that payment they'll work that contract item through the other.

>> Commissioner:   directors any questions ob this exciting contract?

>> I have a couple questions.

We originally thought this could

be done by 2015 when we awarded it at 2012 and we're at 90% and there was a two-year lapse.

I'm confused on what happened I guess.

>> I can try since this predated

lisa's time with the agency in assuming the management of the

contract.

This was a complex project with

harris doing some of the work

and I've been meeting with the team every woo two-weeks for the -- two weeks for the life of

the contract which suggests

hasn't the level of management

of oversight it's needed as we

hit many problems along the way.

With the design build prath

project we didn't hand it over.

We created a spec and worked

with them with harris and

conduent to try to get to the final design requirements and

ultimately the system that met

our performance specs. We've had a lot of challenges

along the way. Some software. Some hardware.

We spent time on the cables that attached to the unit in the cab

of the L.R.V. the cable they provided we found

was not functioning adequately. We moved around and then it wouldn't function.

So this is one small example of

months and month to go twulg -- between the hardware provider

and we've had numerous issues

and there's lessons learned in

how we'd do a large systems proj like this. Every one of the systems projects we've done and we've

down quite a few recently have

had various challenges and largely in terms of the

schedules not being realistic up

front and the iterative nature

of the design taking too long.

It's been in some ways

frustrating but the but cut-over happened a year and a half ago. We were able to cut the busses

over and that's been up and

running and functioning very well. The trains though there's fewer

of them than busses has dragged

out in the last year and a half.

And initially the trains were going to follow immediately

after the busses and it's been

hard to get all the configuration done for the

trains and new trains and so

this is taken longer than we had hoped.

The cut-over that happened March

9 has gotten all that functionality in place.

We can move the folks out of our

old 1950s control system to our

new modern control center and have the service management benefits julie talked about. >> I guess how do we get to a

place where the contract technically expired and the

first contract is a retroactive contract? >> until we had schedule

certainty, we didn't think it

made sense.

I was personal meeting with them every two weeks to know where we

were in the process. We weren't able to resolve such

as the cable issues. We weren't able to project a

final date or even a reasonable expectation for when system completion would be. Rather than come and continue to

update the contract, we also had outstanding commercial issues in

terms of what was in this outside of the spec it seems to

make the most sense to get two substantial completions to resolve the commercial issues

and bring a full close-out mod

in the end.

We were working with eyes wide

open and chose to modify the contract. >> and in the contact with the

next five years are we confident

in the scope of this we'll able

to do the project within $7

million and five years? >> the next is a support contract.

Now that we have the system in

the software part there's maintenance we will need we

would have needed anyway and during the process we found there's functionality we could

have but don't have.

We'll able to do discreet

software enhancements. It's a not to exceed amount.

We May not use the $7 million. If we find greater use than we

anticipated for it, we May want

to come back for an extension. It's a different animal.

This is just maintaining the

software and providing a contract vehicle for enhancements we May want to make. >> what's the obligation for harris working with the new contractor. They're work is ending and then

we hand it over to the new contractor.

>> we'll be bringing a contract

for the radio portion.

They interact but there's two systems. And we'll bring contact for the service of the radio. We'll need ongoing service support from both the organizations and vendors.

>> and the final question is you

mentioned we had a fiber optic wire cut.

How can away void or what can we

do to ensure this doesn't happen again?

I'm sure the contractor paid for that but I'm sure it set us back in time. >> we're work the construction

side to make sure we have the

right containment around.

There's extensive work in the twin peaks project and we had instruction from the contractor

and we've taken that on since and will make sure it happens.

>> do we identify our various wires?

I know with the work happening

and they asked about the P.U.C. And the water project there's

been wires and utility things

are we labelling it and making it clear so we know what's there and in the future we can find it?

>> we have that now and today as well as the drawings and everything that lay everything

out and know exactly what. That's how we knew what the

cable was and what it was for

and back up and not primary.

>> this is an action item.

>> Clerk:   motion to approve.

>> Commissioner:   is there public

comment?

>> Clerk:   no.

>> Commissioner:   public comment is closed.

I'll entertain a motion on both contracts at the same time.

Director torres moved that. >> a second to approve.

>> Commissioner:   all in favor

please say aye. Anyone opposed?

That's as radio clear as it gets.

>> Clerk:   thank you, directors.

>> Clerk:   concludes the business before you today.

>> Commissioner:   let's remember

we are adjourning in memory of

Ms. Rothstein and double down or

our mission to make fellow citizens safe on the streets of san francisco. Thank you, everybody.