Examined or we ask the pilot be dramatically reduced from the 15 or 18 months it is now to a maximum of three months with concurrent Weekly Survey of the impacted neighborhoods nearby. And a systemic study of the impact on the neighborhood. We ask the board immediately direct relevant departments to conduct a study of the traffic and situation on haight street and surrounding neighborhoods and recommend changes to quickly alleviate an already dangerous and unlivable situation. Thank you. Next speaker please marcell patrick, kendall. Can i use the overhead, please . This is currently looking uphill page street completely dominated by a car parking lane, a car travel lane a car travel lane, double parked car and another car parking line. So drivers asking for more driving. My name is marcell. Im a sf resident and a student at uc berkeley and member of the bike coalition. The design of our street convey the value systems of our government and transit agency. Given that, too much of San Francisco values drivers above all other travelers, including cyclists, transit riders and pedestrians. We are a city with ambush Climate Mitigation goals yet a road network that makes it frightening for many to cycle. This is not just the case for major highways or stateoperated roads but in our densest neighborhoods by our schools, parks and public services. Before you today is an opportunity to take a bold step in favor of Sustainable Transportation. It will make cycling safer to riders of all ages and experience levels. I applaud the directors statement on building with children in mind. Page street runs along an elementary school. Theres no better way for our students to develop Sustainable Transportation habits for life than the ability to bike to school safe. The amount of children who have walked to school in the United States has dropped significantly. We are asking for you to approve this project without delay. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Patrick, kendall, rod. Im switching with my brother. Im rod schultz. Im a resident at 188th street. I have two Young Children that were born in that house and this neighborhood has become a disaster when it comes to traffic and backup. The traffic being proposed seems like and feels like an overreach. It is far too long. It is going to take all the traffic that mark spoke about and force it onto haight street. There is no solution for what is proposed right now. As was brought up earlier everybody in the haight street corridor kind of looks to a day where bikes and pedestrians are the top of the pedestrian food chain or travel food chain. Some aspects of this project are pushing it into that direction and that is fantastic but the aftermath of whats going to happen to that intersection and the amount of traffic and buildup that is going to create chaos in that area is not acceptable. The length of this project has to be reduced. The observeability of the project must be brought up on a weekly basis. I urge everybody to have coffee at the crosswalk once a week. Well bring the coffee. You can tell me what you think about these changes. Because the changes are going to be catastrophic and destroy our neighborhood for the people to cycle through our neighborhood. Next speaker please. Kendall. Okay. Hi, im kendall. I live on the 300 block of haight between webster and buchanan. I bike to work every day down haight and do cal tran via 14th. This project first of all as a bicyclist im not going to be able to get to this bikeway because there are no left turns allowed anywhere east of where i live. So there are a lot of problems in the return direction as well. Theres no left turn from buchanan onto haight. And if im coming down webster theres no left turn allowed onto haight either. So that basically makes our house into an island. We cant the detours to ride legally around this area are lengthy and they involve a lot of climbing. We are on the top of the hill. So anything that pushes us a different direction means climbing back up from different directions. So it looks like we are going to see a lot of the problems weve seen on page get diverted to our block. And we are going to have parking restrictions, tow aways, traffic, three lanes of traffic longer crossing distances a range of behaviors that are going to emerge as people run down the bus lane and try to cut in and do other things do all the stuff we have seen low lower down on haight. So i oppose this part of the project. I like the transit priority. I like the bike priority, obviously. But it looks like its going to turn our block on to a freeway onramp, really. We have no parking buffer by our house. We step off the curb and get hit by a bus. I really like we are just kind of shoving the problem under the rug. Thank you. Im sorry. Your time is up. Thanks. Patrick schultz david michelle, Miriam Goldman and then brian ruber. Are any of those laidies or gentlemen here . Hes left doesnt have to be exactly in order. Miriam goldman, brian r you are ber. I live on upper haight between page and oak so page is my goto street when im riding downtown. Ive had obviously sufficient opportunity to appreciate what others have adequately described as chaos in lower haight especially during the rush hours. I do support the long pilot. But i think a number of speakers, im surprised to say, pleased to say who support the general goal also seem to have reasonable concerns about the length of the project before its effects are reevaluated. I am going to support the current project but i think that maybe you should reconsider as a 12month or Something Like that. We know traffic patterns vary with seasons so i dont think three months makes a lot of sense. And i think i really want to say i have a lot of empathy for the folks who live in the neighborhood, the riders as well as the drivers. Nobody likes to be parked by a traffic experiment, which this is. But i believe im hearing everyone saying this congestion which is essentially the outcome of octavia parkway and the freeway entrances that existed before the 89 quake, this is an overall district issue that this is going to be part of the solution and its pretty obvious its not the entire solution. So i urge you to support it. But i would like to suggest you consider a somewhat shorter test period. It seems to me lots more can be learned in order to mitigate possible problems on haight street the people have been talking about. I want to thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Miriam Goldman Brian ruben, kristin lecky, raphael hi, im Miriam Goldman. Im a ucff ph. D. Student and i go on haight street every day to get to ucff mission bay. I have almost been hit on the street many times. I bike early in the morning. A protective bike lane would keep me safe as a bike rider who rides there every day. I really really support this. I live on page street. This is the best way i have to get to work. Please support this. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Brian ruben. Kristin raphaela elizabeth. Good afternoon. My name is brian ruben. I live at 1162 page street. Im going to keep this brief. I love living on page street. I love how opulent it is, and most importantly i love how easy it is for me to get to School Every Day using page street. And for this reason, it really hurts my heart every day to just wonder if this is going to be it, if this is going to be the day that some car decides to make a right turn without signaling and thats it. And sitting here and listening to several of the concerns that residents particularly in the haight neighborhood, have raised, i really do encourage the board also to consider these concerns in moving forward with this proposal but at the end of the day this proposal would not only go a long way in making me safe but along with many of the other countless bikers who use page every day in order to get to work and to school. And i really appreciate the commitment that the board has shown to Public Safety and i encourage you to follow through with that value and pass this measure. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Kristin raphaela, elizabeth, rowan. Good afternoon, directors. Animy name is kristin and im the Community Organizer on staff with the San Francisco bicycle coalition. Im here on behalf of our 10,000 plus members to stress our strong support for the pilot. The project before you brings necessary improvements on page street that neighbors, elected officials and advocates have continuously asked for over the past five plus years. When you have the supervisor of this district both neighborhood associations that this project cuts through bicycle and pedestrian advocates in full support and nearly 100 letters of full support from neighbors, some of which i will scan and send theres no way this shouldnt move forward today. If this doesnt constitute public will, i dont know what will. This is a true pilot that can be easily moved. We know there will be design tweaks given the difficult traffic circulation issues we are dealing with. We look forward to having followups with staff during the pilot implementation to better understand the impacts and benefits. I want to acknowledge that we have heard from neighbors and merchants that they have concerns around parking restrictions and congestion on haight street as well. I would ask the board to direct staff to look toward Creative Solutions to these concerns. If we could install a similar traffic diverter at octavia im positive we would get the transit and businessfriendly street that neighbors and merchants are asking you for today. Since 2015 the sfmta collected data, interviewed stakeholders and hosted open houses. Its time we end this slow planning process and get this in the ground now. What we are asking you for today is to take the necessary action to improve the safety of those walking and biking on page street. I look forward to the approval of this project. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker please. Raphaela, elizabeth, rowan, jessica. Good afternoon, directors. My name is raphael. Im an antitrust economic researcher. I live on page street. And i take this street to work every single day downtown. As everyone as mentioned, i dont need to repeat it here, its a freeway onramp simply put. Cars back up three to five blocks. We are at constant risk of cars pulling out and hitting us, pedestrian children, its a nobrainer that this needs to move forward. Oak street, its meant to be an onramp, page street, its not. I dont think it needs to stop at page street as the director mentioned. If we want to mirror some of our behaviors to cities like copen hagen where we have a a friendly direction toward bicyclists, it needs to start here and expand to other places in our city. This is a good place to start for prioritizing the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians. In terms of the time span of the pilot, i believe 15 months is an appropriate length. If we shorten it to three, six or 12 we begin to lose the integrity of the data and measurement of trying to figure out is this appropriate or not are we observing seasonal swings, are we observing a short time frame phenomenon. We need the right amount of data to observe if this is the right decision for the neighborhood or not. I echo the sentiments of those who live on haight street and are worried if we are going to be pushing traffic onto that street. But this shouldnt start on page and end there. We need to expand the safety directives and expand on the haight street as well. Thank you. Elizabeth followed by Rowan Jessica and richard johnson. Im elizabeth. Im a tenyear resident and a small street facing rentcontrolled apartment on buchanan. When i moved into the neighborhood i referred to it as the sleepy end of lower haight. With years of Construction Projects on my street, gps maps and uber, my street has become congested. Its not uncommon for traffic to be backed up outside my windows as drivers try to avoid the octavia entrance to the freeway. The page street freeway access becomes closed with the goal of using oak or haight as the main access points. Its unrealistic to think drivers will remain on these streets rather than choosing alternate routes. I think its a good thing to get the ability to get around the city without use of the car and i agree page is a disaster zone. But the reality is people do drive cars and especially the people who live farther west and they need to pass through this neighborhood to get to the freeway. I feel for the people who live on page and haight. The streets are overly crowded. I dont want my neighborhood to become overly congested as well. These restrictions of no turning are going to force traffic to come to my direction to get to the alternate route to avoid the octavia entrance. I never received any information with an opportunity to give input on the condition of my neighborhood before the plank developed and up for approval. I think it was september the first time i saw a sign on the street post walking toward page street and didnt receive anything in the mail. I never received any surveys to share my experience during the planning stages of the project. So as far as i know we havent been included. Its been mainly page street focused for the issues they face there. So the things i would ask is we have to include people from my neighborhood to see what happens and also 15 months feels like a very long pilot. Rowan jessica, richard janelle. Good afternoon, board of directors. Rowan, a cyclist in San Francisco. Im in strong support of this project. Im happy to see that when i first heard of this project it was just going to be a traffic diverter in front of the elementary and that was it and some bike lane upgrades and since then the staff realized the root of the problem is the fact you can use page to get to octavia and the solution is to get it impossible and then the traffic will go away. They have now done this and i applaud them for this. Im excited by this project. I would like to express my disappointment about three things. One is some of the neighbors speaking here who either dont or do but do recognize but dont express the need that the chaos they are talking about already happens on page and some of what we pushed around i find it interesting that there doesnt seem to be a recognition that its just moving chaos around, which is not great, we should also close traffic on haight probably to get to octavia but this is not creating new problems. Its moving problems around. Lets recognize that. This is not coming from nowhere. I would like to express my disappointment that we are proposing to build another unprotected bike lane on page. That bike lane for one block is great so congratulations for approving 0. 1 miles of bike lane but it could be 0. 5 if the three blocks uphill were also protected. And thats a bit of prioritization that i would like there that im disappointed with. And the prioritization of muni on haight street im disappointed to hear that was even parking off hours to begin with, its not just another red lane. Its disappointing to have it watered down further. Haight is an important bus route. There should be a red line there. Thank you. Jessica richard, janelle and then scott. Good afternoon. My name is jessica. I live on the 500 block of haight street. And i strongly support the age street bikeway improvements. I walk and bike every day on page street going first down haight to make a left on buchanan to page. I dont see anything about the project that would prevent me from talking the route that i would already take. The main thing of having page neat street not be a freeway onramp right now is usable only by experienced cyclists. I bike with my kid to school. He usually using the on street bike infrastructure with me. Hes five. He uses it all the way to school except on page street, he is allowed to be on the sidewalk and im not so im in the middle with a lane of traffic and a lane of parking separating me from him for three blocks. I would fully support making it westbound only for buses but i think page street is a good priority to have, just when i was working fliering for this meeting, its just striking how many bicyclists are using it. And they are just being pushed into this tiny space for the benefit for people to not really be able to get on octavia street. Like five cars can get from page street onto octavia at each light cycle. It doesnt make sense. And also to put a plug in for the pedestrian improvements around john mayor, im planning to send my kid to school there next year. Theres a crossing guard at page and webster. There isnt one at page at buchanan and constantly in the mornings while kids are trying to get to school, theres cars in the crosswalk. Theres kids whose heads dont go over the hood of the cars walking behind the cars in the crosswalk. Richard johnson janelle wong scott nicky. Hi, my name is richard johnson. Ive lived at the epicentre of this since 1990. When i moved there the greatest threat as a pedestrian was being mugged or the high crime thats there. Now its when i walk out my door im a pedestrian and its the fact of being on guard of being hit by a car or a bike. Im in favor of whats going on here. But what i would like to say for a caveats are to me the very simple and ive been asking this for about a decade, we need to take out the right turns and left turns at both page and haight and do a traffic study that shows that that would effectively move more traffic through our neighborhood because whats happening now is cars are cueing to the lights and the lights are pretty much ineffective because 30 to 40 percent of the light is wasted for traffic to move through. And the other is air quality which ive been bringing up for a long time as someone who walks through the neighborhood and has to stop at the stop signs and stoplight it has become measurably, and if i understand, we are actually a hot spot for the city of San Francisco. I bring this up on a frequent basis. They say thats a dp environmental issue. And i think they need to look at that. The other issue in this is that of the winners here, its pretty much cars are still being able to do what theyve been able to do. Theres no promotion of getting the drivers out of their cars. And also you might scapegoat uber lyft but its the consumers that are the ones instead of walking or biking. And kudos to the bikes, i enjoy seeing the bikes coming down the hill. I envision this as an improvement. As someone who has worked in the neighborhood, also from an mta staff point when they say they cant enforce i and other Community Members have your time is up. Its frustrating weve gone through so many meetings. One staff says they cant do it because of enforcement theres a community and police issue. Everybody gets the same amount of time. Im sorry. Janelle, scott, nicky, adam. Good afternoon directors. My name is janelle and ive been a resident of San Francisco since 2000. Ive been riding page street on my bicycle since before the bike lane existed. It was my primary route. I supported the middle bike lane that was painted to legalize cyclist behavior of passing cars on the left. Here is why the project is safer and better. In its current state i will not i repeat i will not allow by 13yearold or 10yearold boys to ride down that infrastructure. When i ride it with them, we go from the west side of the city we take the wiggle to the mostly protected bike lane of Market Street in the hopes of more protected. I encourage you to approve this project in its entirety as it is planned and presented to you today. The project will make it safer, faster, quieter with less polluted streets for most of the vulnerable users of our streets in San Francisco. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Scott nicky adam cat. Hi. Scott feeny. Ive been riding my bike on paige street for fiveyears, about as long as as the planning has been going on. I want to express my strong support for the improvements in the downhill direction eastbound. I think its going to feel a lot safer to be riding down the hill with that protected bike lane with traffic getting diverted of my so i strongly support that and urge you to move that forward. Within the context of my strong support for that overall project i would like to express some disappointment with the westbound uphill treatment. This is when i first moved to San Francisco i lived in Ashbury Heights and this was my route downtown. I would come up page street. Now i live in mission but i use page to get to ocean beach haight, et cetera. The problem is those three blocks of page when you are going up the hill are very scary because not only is it a moderately steep hill, but also you are very exposed. You could be hit by a door opening. You could be hit by a double parked car will you tell the jurying forward or someone passing you very close lurching forward or someone passing you very close. While i welcome the existence of a bike lane going uphill, i would like to see that be a protected bike lane all the way up the hill so when you are going up that hill you can take your time you can be safe and feel protected. I dont think that the bike lane between the moving cars and the parked cars is going to be adequate in the uphill direction to remove those conflicts. And although it will require and this is why mta staff told me they dont want to do that, because it would require taking out more parking. But there is a lot of parking almost every other street on ivy roads laguna. We just want one safe bike route from market. Next speakers. Good afternoon. My name is nicky cooper. I am the owner of a place on haight street. We are san San Franciscos first legacy business. My parents opened the business in 77. I took over in 2006. Im here to represent San Franciscos Small Business community and the death of San Franciscos Small Business community. I am more than a headline on hood line when you see your favorite neighborhood restaurant close. This is the face of the dying Small Business community. This is the face of the marginalized Small Business community. The treatment of sfmta towards us in my opinion has been deplorable. We didnt know the merchants and neighbors of haight street didnt know about this until september. Im the one that called the meeting with sfmta in september. I was told that there would be a followup meeting to go over our suggestions that would be implemented in the proposal. That was not going to happen. Ive been called a second meeting. I was told i was going to get ridership numbers after the second meeting. That never happened. So i am for the protection of bikers. I think everyone is here. We dont want to see another death. However i am also for the sustainability of San Franciscos Small Business community. I would like to see the restrictions from three to six removed during this Pilot Program to give us time to see how we can Work Together but not just jump off the edge of the ship and say you know what, this is how its going to be and then our businesses suffer in the meantime. So im just asking for compromise for the Small Business community and merchants of San Francisco. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Adam, cat ben jason. Doesnt have to come up in order. Hi. Im cat carter, San Francisco transit riders. I want to thank staff for trying to mitigate impacts on muni for a bicycle project. I do support the project. I always support pilots because we can assess in realtime what the impacts are and we have a chance to alter things if they dont work. We do have one of the slowest transit systems in the country. We cant let it get any slower which is what is happening as congestion increases, which everybody is talking about today. And i also dont think i need tell you from your earlier discussions that like parking actually is a major leading cause of traffic. I understand that some private vehicle access is important to Small Business success but we need to look at short term spaces on nearby side streets and not let Parking Spaces impede the movements of tens of thousands of ridersnt muni route. I hope you are looking closely at transit speeds and transit ridership. I support this project as a start for improving haight street for transit riders. Thank you very much. Ben black, jason henderson,. My name is ben black. I live at 249 page street which is the epicentre of this conflict between the bikes and cars. I have never in my 50 years have taken a day off work to speak to a governmental organization. But im here to tell you that somebody is going to die at this intersection. You are sending bikes into a road where the cars coming from franklin, cars coming down, bikes coming down at 25 Miles Per Hour going into a meat grinder. Ive picked up personally two kids bloody and beaten that have been tboned by cars asked them if they want to have 911 and they both said no way do i want to have an ambulance. I had to drive one of them home. Somebody is going to die at this intersection so i came down today to put you all on notice that this solution uphill one way is the best solution that i could possibly have asked for. Its going to save lives. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Jason henderson brian hagsman. Good afternoon directors. My name is jason. Im the chair of the haight valley planning committee. I live on haight street. We endorse this proposal. Its a pilot. Stockholm did a pilot for congestion pricing. It worked. So keep that in mind. This has been a very long public process. It has been over a decade actually, back with the sftca they did a study and said car traffic going to the freeway just an using page nor haight. We appreciate the current concerns of our neighbors but we would urge that you actually consider taking similar steps on haight street to protect the bus. Theres a hierarchy. I gave you guys a presentation with maps and illustrations of this problem. But think of oak and fell as the cross town car or express street and we can do some transportation management. So one thing that we are asking is in addition to this pilot proposal, that the sfmta do this longer term Corridor Study of haight, page, oak and fell and look to other places where they do sophisticated metering and traffic management. Thats what they do in copenhagen, they manage the flow of the traffic without having to price it or whats happening now, which is doing nothing, has made this a catastrophe. I would like you to also think about equity. We in hayes valley have absorbed or are about to absorb 6,000 housing units. We are doing our part in this big multiple moving pieces of solving the Regional Housing crisis. But we are paying the crisis of unacceptable chronic congestion that goes late in the evening and happens on weekends. So think about all these people moving through here. Thank you. Thank you. Brian, he is the last person to turn in a speaker card. If you have not turned in a speaker card, if you would please. Thank you. Good afternoon chair and board members. I am brian. Im walk San Franciscos outreach coordinator. Im here to share our strong support for these muchneeded safety improvements on page street. When walk sf and others sported the page street supported the page Street Project, we were excited to see the garden and the citys first ever protected intersection approved because we know they will slow drivers and protect people of all ages walking and biking on page, whether they are walking to school, to either of the parks or on their way to and from work or back home. We thank the sfmta for continuing this work with the community to improve safety on page because we know that its not working for everyone. Especially those most vulnerable using the streets. People often face a amaze of freewaybound traffic. Each year traffic injures five people just on these three blocks. If we are going to achieve vision zero we need projects like this thoughtful collaborative quicklyimplemented pilot projects that test new ways of prioritizing space for people. For that reason we ask that you approve this pilot. We are excited this could be in the ground early next year already and we ask that you move with the same speed to implement the other page street neighborhood improvements that were approved more than a year ago. With construction recently noted as coming summer of 2020, we are concerned that weve heard design work is still in progress and construction might be fall 2020 at the earliest, over two years since its approval. We owe it to the neighbors who have spoken up to these change changes to the in the ground on time. Next speaker. Its robin levitt, the last person. Good afternoon. Im an over 25year resident of page and octavia. I live here octavia. I bicycle on page street to work every day eastbound and come home westbound page every day. I walk through the neighborhood constantly. I have a dog so im walking through the page octavia the laguna, page the buchanan page and on haight street all the time. I just want to tell you some of my experiences personal experiences. Several years ago, probably five or six years ago when a car was blocking the crosswalk at laguna and page and i protested a passenger in the car got out and hit me and knocked me to the ground and i was taken unconscious to the hospital with a concussion. One time i was walking my dog across page at laguna and i was in the crosswalk and a car just went right through. I had to jump on the hood of the car to keep the car from running over my dog. When i first moved into the neighborhood i used to have to clean my window sills from all the soot from the freeway. I didnt have to do that for many years, but now with the advent of uber and lyft and the traffic has increased tremendously. Im now constantly cleaning soot off my windows again. I never had asthma in my life. Now i have asthma, and someone spoke about the quality of the air in the neighborhood earlier. Its getting very bad. So these are just my personal experiences. And i think im very supportive of the proposed changes also important are the proposed changes to westbound page between market and octavia. So i very much support that. And i want to thank casey and mark and all the staff. Im sorry your time is up. And all the sfmta for all their great work. Thank you. That is the last person to turn in a speaker card. Any additional Public Comment on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. I would like to call staff back up to go over a few things. First off i recognize this is a page Street Project to people are focused on page street, but obviously everything shifts around the city. So why didnt we reach out to the Merchant Community or people closer to haight and some of the other neighborhood groups sooner just because i recognize this project has been on the docket for a while and people on page street and the bicycling community have been paying attention but those other people who are going on directly impacted by that other behavior, why didnt we reach out to them sooner . I can speak to that. As i mentioned in the presentation, this starletted as an started as an outgrowth. The proposals were focused on page street and didnt contain such big changes as traffic circulation adjustments. So when we imparted on this pilot effort identifying it as something we would need to do with the pilot because we cant know for certain how things would turn out this was in late summer so thats when we brought the outreach out expanded it beyond page street. We were already connected to folks there. We were thinking about folks in haight and other parts of the neighborhood so we did mailers and postings and just different means. So it was using the open house but for folks who cant come to an open house also having these office hours and other events. But we also realized there were concerns on haight street that we werent cognizant of and werent thinking about as deeply so we slowed down that outreach process by a month to meet with the merchants and a selforganized group of several dozen neighbors and some of those conversations could be pretty fruitful. So that has led to some adjustments. I would also like to impress the pilot is an extension of the outreach. This isnt something we can easily model and to know how things are going to go with traffic Modeling Software and continue in different terms of what we should do on the street. The one thing im hearing is the status quo is not working. So we think the pilot is a step in the right direction and we look forward to continuing to having many more conversations with constituents to see how things might turn out and stand ready to make adjustments. A couple things. I want to implore us to do a better job of outreach with Small Business community. You are in your business, running your business, you are not going to meetings or paying attention to other things because you have to deal with people not showing up and product being delivered. Theres a million things so its hard for them to engage. When the mayor did a roundtable during the month of may during Small Business week and we were the Number One Agency that everyone was angry about because our lack of outreach and lack of engagement so we just have to do better because again these people are running a business. They are not out there paying attention to all our signage, signs on the poles. Number two, we should be thinking about whenever we do any sort of improvement, in the area of googling maps mapquest, when we make changes those applications make changes. So even naturally things get rediverted so i would love to know if weve done any outreach even for the pilot to see if any of the companies can geofence people out off haight street. Because my biggest concern with this project im supportive of the project, is the diversion of traffic onto haight street and to the detriment of the merchants who wont have people visit their businesses because people will be trying to get to the freeway. Have we reached out to those companies to see if theyll partner with us around geofencing. When we make changes from the street, we are able to make changes to google and apple to if its something thats been legislated, they are happy to incorporate it. If its not something that is prohibited, its open to the public, that street would be reflected on public maps. What marks answer reflects is our experience of a couple years with this. We have tried to ask Navigation Companies and others to sort of help be partners in managing traffic, and thats not a role they are willing to play. With the exception of some successful partnerships with tncs around the chase centre we have not had success with Mapping Companies saying please dont send people down this street. The other things ive brought up that ive talked to staff about is additional signage that says local only traffic to make sure its clear to people going on to the freeway that its not for them to drive on. So i know we dont do that a lot but maybe thats something we could look at doing around here. And then also look at some of the additional turn restrictions for the people who couldnt make a right off haight to octavia. Can we also look at those things as well . We can look at that. And i think i see on the calendar item the turn restriction is a step in the right direction but we could look at further alternatives. The other thing related to Small Businesses is i ask if we can look on webster street, there are parking spots on those side streets that are not metered and perhaps we could do a metering treatment. I dont want these businesses that might need delivery or have pickups, some of those restaurants are popular for delivery pickups, to not have people pull somewhere. So maybe the fixed spaces that are neighborhood parking on a temporary base busy would be converted to meter or short term parking so those people, i saw there are spaces along webster street where you could do this so it could help the businesses along haight street, particular in the peak hours when their coming in to patronize their businesses, have we looked at webster and how we can treat that for temporary parking just for the pilot . I can circulate these ideas to the occur, Management Team. Weve been working with them on expanding parking. I think theres construction going on right now. So maybe we could make those during the pm peak. Because ultimately, one of the reasons people go to haight street is because it has all the commercial storefronts there and unfortunately we live in an era where theres a lot of delivery and the likes. If we can figure out a way to provide some spaces that are currently all the time spaces to make them shorterterm spaces. I also mentioned to staff, and i havent talked to the merchants about this, about whether or not we should look at extending meter hours to 8 00 p. M. And the reason i was thinking this, because if you make the parking available at 6 00 then all of a sudden all the neighborhood people park in the spots and then those businesses dont actually get people who are turning over coming to their business. So thats something again im not proposing that without talking to the business, the merchants but i think we should talk to the merchants about whether it makes sense to extend along haight street the meter hours for especially if we are taking away the parking from 3 to 6 so people can turn over at least until 8 00 at night so those are a few other things. Also the bike lane going westbound and why it couldnt be curb side, i think it is better to have curb side bike lanes and safer, and i personally dont like to ride on bike lanes that are not curb side. So can you talk about that especially for the uphill orientation . Sure. With the westbound uphill bike lane the Traffic Volume would be considerably lower, it would be very low. So i say constitutes a neighbor way. A neighbor way can take many different forms. Generally its a shared street with low Traffic Volumes and low speeds. So for the block of page from octavia to laguna and up to webster the only way to get onto that would be the right turn from octavia onto page. So we think the Traffic Volumes are going to be they are already quite low in the westbound direction and they are going to be much lower that sharing that space is quite acceptable. Okay. Then finally back to the Small Businesses because i want to make sure we have information around the circulation for the pilot so people know trying to access the businesses how to get there but we provide materials to this Small Business owners figure out how we help work with the oewz to help promote supporting this community. I do want to watch this really closely and see how things are going, especially how soon do we think well be in the street with the pilot . Depending on the available maybe february march if we can realtime and pull sales tax numbers just working with the Merchant Community. Its a really tough time in Small Business for a variety of reasons, and anything we can do to be supportive and also make sure their customers know how to reach their businesses particularly during the peak hours when they are no longer able to park there its going to be critical. I wish that we could accommodate the request. But i also believe our muni cannot accommodate the request in terms of the problems we have making the time frames that we are trying to make today that we are going to have real challenges without having that be taken away during the peak hours. So i understand that. But i just want to emphasize whatever we can do to be in partnership with our Small Business community because the people live here because of that. That makes our city unique. We need to do everything to support them, at the same time getting people across town the way that we need to. So with that, i will let other people talk. [laughter] Management Team. Who makes the decisions on this project . You or our acting director . When you say Management Team you say well take it to the Management Team. The curb management. Who are these people . They work on parking they have the power to say no 3 to 6 . This is the team that generally looks at neighborhood parking issues loading who makes the final decision . You do . Ultimately you all make the final decision and i make the decision about what items to bring to you. The curb Management Team, they have expertise in parking. Right now you are opposed to moving the 3 to 6 . We think keeping the curb clear from 3 to 6 is important to keep the 20,000 riders moving no matter how much business they lose . What happens if theres a tremendous impact on Small Businesses . Will then you change it . I think we are open to almost any parameters or reporting back restrictions you want to put on this pilot. If you want to report back in three to month months. The length of the pilot is a year . 15 months in 15 months youll determine how many Small Businesses went out of business because of that three to six . We can report back on on everything . We can report back on any issue less than 15 months the witnesses i enjoy hearing from, is it christy from the bicycle youve had a proposal that had a lot of nods from the audience. Do you recall what that was . Could you step up to the microphone, please thank you madame chair. It was a traffic diverter at haight and octavia similar to page where we would be cutting off freeway access on haight. So folks can equally get to businesses because there would be no freeway congestion but also the buses would be able to run better because they wouldnt be dealing with that congestion as well. We could certainly look at that. We want to make sure that it has the same amount for page street. We dont want to surprise people with a rule like that. Shell come to you with a line. [laughter] other directors . First of all i wanted to applaud the staff, which probably doesnt happen enough in your lifetime for pursuing a pilot, per se. I think one of the gentlemen who testified said no one wants to be part of a traffic experiment. And he may be right. But i think in my view we need to be experimenting more, not less in San Francisco. And when you experiment it means you have to acknowledge when you fail and not try to hold on and pull off a success at the last minute. Two points i wanted to pursue. One of them, quite a few people talked about the length of the pilot. And 15 months does strike me as pretty long. Its starting to feel permanent. Frankly, i think after a couple of months you are going to know whether weve got a boy or a girl here. So i would suggest something and maybe i should just ask you a question, why didnt you consider something maybe half that long . Dont you think you learn enough in that period of time . I think things take a while to adjust to especially big changes like this could take several months. Ill reiterate we are looking to come back to the board in four months to share what we have already seen. But looking at things as they progress throughout the season and throughout the year, as kids are in and out of school. If you did have half that long, if you are getting it up in the spring, you could have a summer and fall evaluation. It need not stay as it is for the entirety. Part of it is a matter for the public. When they see 15 months they sort of lock in on that and it feels like they are stuck with it for 15 months. If it were shorter, i dont think they would feel that way. They might still want it to be shorter still, but i think they would have some assurance that hey, i was promised its only this long. So thats something maybe for my colleagues to consider. Because i would certainly support a motion that reduced the length of the pilot. The second is the question of operations. And here ive got a question maybe just out of ignorance. When we do Something Like this what is our operating strategy . Do we have more enforcement out there . It seems to me that when we get a power point out like this for a project, it auto to have a slide on operations, not only what changes are we going to make to the physical arrangement of the facility but how are we going to operate it, because as you say it is a difference, and its going to take people a while to react. So whats the operating strategy for this and similar pilots . Yeah. So we have limited enforcement resources but we budgeted to do two months of enforcement when this goes into effect, and we are looking for support of the Police Department. This would be the Police Department this would be signs so people alerted to the recon figuration of the street before they go into effect. Thats good. Thank you. Other speakers . Not everybody agrees that we heard from, but one thing we heard that was fairly universal was nobody wants traffic on their street which is validating of the transit zero emission. I do wonder about that because weve laid out this clear hierarchy that this is supposed to be the bike street and haight street is supposed to be the transit street and we are encouraging drivers on oak and fell, why we didnt do the restriction that was recommended of restricting turns from haight onto octavia as part of this and how quickly we could make that a mitigation for a lot of the concerns weve heard about increased traffic on haight. Because i dont think thats our vision either. I think we are sympathetic to those concerns. That hierarchy makes sense to a lot of us. It was proproposed to do something on haight street is it more of a proposal or a direct to staff. Its something that came out of our outreach in the past few months so i dont know what that would look like. The project proposed to you came out of several years of outreach and we had that commitment to folks we have been working with to bring something forward and test it. But that doesnt mean the agency could look into things on haight street or other neighborhood streets in the future. Do you think when you bring us midterm evaluation whether its three months four months, whatever you are talking about when observing the data. Can we come back with the data on whether the changes are materializing and with that study what that rightturn restriction would look like . Certainly we can come back and report on haight street and have some ideas okay, great. I like going near the end. All my smart fellow directors have made all the points and i can say yes. I support torres and eakens proposal to continue to study haight street, not only for Parking Management but to get rid of the freewaybound traffic on haight street. Because we do unfortunately we create winner and loser streets. And right now people are concerned rightly that haight is going to become more of a loser street with more car traffic which also can help address the business issue. We cant deliver more customers to these businesses via automobile. We can deliver it via fantastic transit and walking and biking conditions and evening parking meters. Thank you very much vicechair borden. Lets reach out to the Business Community and see if they would support extending the meters to eight or even ten if the businesses are open that late for restaurants and night businesses. I think those are great things. One clarification. We had somebody who was talking about being a bike commuter but having his house kind of cut off by the prohibited turns. Bicycle can make these prohibited turns correct . Are there going to be turns prohibited for cars and okay for bicycles . Everything before you today you would be able to maneuver through with a bicycle. Thats the intent. There could be some left turn restrictions due to sightlines the crest of the hill the intersection at the top of the hill. So those would be in effect for any vehicle in the way you would navigate that as a bike rider is maybe a twostage turn. We call that a european left where we go through the intersection. I think thats great. And i cant say enough how important this is to page street. I ride that a lot as well. And it can be a little hairy when you are going down that bike lane and the cars are cueing up to go to the freeway and if someone decides they dont want to be in the cue and they make a u turn and there you are on your bike its a little frightening. And also its going to free up the traffic flow on oak street, because there are going to be fewer cars, there are going to be no cars going on page onto octavia. Its going to free up the flow from oak. If we do the same thing on haight street, its going to free up the flow even more. For the commenter who lives on buchanan and is worried about the cars or Current Situation where cars come down buchanan and go left on her manman when we get done with better Market Street thats going to go away because cars arent going to be able to go all the way down market to van ness is my understanding. You would not be able to access van ness. But herman is one of those streets we want to look at. It could be right for traffic coming. So again every time we make a change as everybody pointed out theres that Ripple Effect where we have to continue to look out but just because what is in front of us deals mostly with page street and somewhat with haight street, that doesnt mean we are done. We all know its a moving puzzle that we continue to look at it so again, thank you so much for the work that you and your staff have done on this. Its been really eyeopening to hear all the comments and everything. So ill move to approve. Director heinicke. You got a second already . We have a second . I wanted to ask some questions. First of all to the folks who came down here and shared with us their neighborhood experience, its very moving. Ive known mr. Black for decades now and ive never heard him speak so passionately about a civic item. So that meant a lot to me. And those of you who took time to help your neighborhood be better and our city safer i appreciate it. Its meant a lot to all of us. So i will support this program. It seems to me this is a matter of life and death and thats an easy call. And now the next question is how do we accommodate our Small Business community
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