Transcripts For SFGTV 20240622 : vimarsana.com

Transcripts For SFGTV 20240622

Update this, this is a yearly or every other year . Its usually every two years. Er really that was my only question, it was a very interesting reading and it was a great wrap up so i will make a motion to approve . Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Mr. Chairman item 12 on your agenda amends the transportation Code Division ii, section 601 to extend the transit only area on Market Street from 8th street to 3rd street westbound and from 5th street to 3rd street eastbound and approves various traffic and parking modifications to implement the safer Market Street project, i will not read all of the traffic modifications. Mr. Mcguire, are you going to present . Okay thank you. Good afternoon again director im joined with marie hunter from our staff, im excited to be here to talk to you today about a great opportunity to support vision 0 and to support the safer Market Street project. The top priority of our agency and of the sustainable Streets Division is Public Safety and the top priority of this project is protecting the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who use Market Street on foot, on bicycles, riding muni and in vehicles every day. Market streets are mostly [inaudible] street and southbound be our safer street however its not. Someone is hit by a vehicle and injured every one to two weeks, four of the 20 most dangerous intersections of the city for pedestrians are Market Street, market and 4th market and 5th market and 6th market and 7th and as we think about what our commitment to vision 0 means we say trashes and debts on the street are not longer acceptable, these transit conditions we dont believe are acceptable. The kinds of crashes that are happening on Market Street are largely resulting from vehicles making turns across crosswalks when pedestrians have the rightofway, when there are heavy pedestrian volumes and vehicles hit pedestrians while theyre crossing the crosswalks, the only way to save lives and reduce jirs is to reduce dramatically the number of vehicles wlo are making turns and thats what the basis of this project is. This is not a project that is about taxi regulations it has nothing to do with trying to pit taxis against uber, its about reducing the number of vehicles wlo are turning so we can reduce the number of collision that is are taking place on Market Street. Were particularly looking to protect the most Vulnerable People on Market Street, those wlo are on bicycles and more importantly those on foot. It will have the added benefit of reducing vehicle congestion because what marie hunter walks through the details of the way the prescribers work, the streets from 3rd to 8th do experience high congestion during peak hours, a lot of that as a result of one or two vehicles trying to turn right and blocking traffic, that will go away, and just as importantly by extending the red bus lanes on Market Street all the way to third street on both directions will have a direct increase of the reliability of the muni bus line, so well no longer have that condition where one or two vehicles pull up and an entire bus full of people is not able to load or unload because of peak hours because of the reliability of vehicles on Market Street. I want to make sure were not banning private vehicles from Market Street, were proposing a series of turn restrictions so just like private vehicles are required to turn in the eastbound direction at ted street today but can reenter at 9th street, when marie goes through details, there are certain private details to reach certain intersperses on Market Street, but in those intersections where we have heavy crash patterns we want to restrict those. St project is designed that exempts small commercial vehicle from the turn restrictions so the vehicles who would be exempt from the prescribers are buses including our own muni fleet commercial vehicles like delivery vans and delivery trucks with commercial plates, taxis, and any other vehicle that has a commercial license plate. I want to be clear about that, there are certain vehicles that are driven as limousines, private car services and tcp class vehicles which do operate in tmc fleets. The vehicles that will not be allowed to make the turns are private vehicles and private vehicles includes everything from the private automobile owned by any of us to a tmc vehicle that is not a registered commercial vehicle and i believe that is the source of much of the public discussion about the tmc impacts earlier this week. I think its important to acknowledge there are long stretches of Market Street because of the heavy transit traffic, the green like lane and is the narrowness of the street theres no safe place to stop on Market Street. One of the important features that i want to make sure that doesnt get lost is 12 new passenger loading zones on all the cross streets on market between 3rd and 8th, so 8 new white zones four new blue zones for disabled curb access every cross street between 3rd and 8th, every single block of market between 3rd and 8th will have a passenger loading zone on both the south and the north side of market, so were maintaining accessibility for private vehicles at all the intersections and achieving some alighting and akhao efg some paintbacker painted safety zones as well but were saying the safe place to unload and load is at those zones, on on Market Street. Im going to turn it over to marie hunter whos going to walk through some of the details of the project and well be happy to answer your questions. Good afternoon. Thank you. As tom mentioned, this is a project that supports vision zero so weve been working on this for over a year now. We started with an intercept survey in the summer of 2014, this we were on the streets connecting with people who were just walking by to understand how people were accessing Market Street and using the street, we found that the vast majority were walking, biking, taking transit, even those who did drive to the project area were not driving along Market Streets, they parked at a nearby location and then walked to Market Street. We also conducted two outreach events as well as the public hearing that required sending out notices to all the businesses along Market Street additionally, weve reached out to over 20 stakeholders and groups, directly engaged them to provide briefings and updates, our information is on the website always available to field questions, and finally we have been connected with mapping providers to make sure that if this project moves forward, were able to update those navigational tools so people can access the project area safely. So, the proposals that were bringing to you today include turn restrictions, so vehicles as they today travel across Market Street, that motion or that ability will not be disrupted by this project. This is just turn prescribers on to Market Street. Again, through between the intersections of 3rd and 8th street we selected turn restrictions, this countermeasure because of the local benefit as tom mcguire mentioned we have a lot of conflicts with turning movements and the large volumes of pedestrians. This reduces the conflict turn restrictions also have the benefit of extending beyond the intersection because youre removing that traffic, it also mitigates the collisions were seeing mid block, we see a lot of collisions mid block as well with one treatment were addressing both of those issues. The other treatment that we are proposing is extending the transit only lanes so they currently exist in the westbound direction starting at 8th street and extend to fifth street in the eastbound direction both will be extended to 3rd street. Again as previously mentioned, this we have a number of transit line that is are coming into the corridor at various places but there are times when we have 12 bus routes including the f line and so this eliminates some of that weaving in and out of that center lane for vehicles that are still allowed to access Market Street. And again it does remove part of na delay that were seeing today with vehicles parked at or stopped at transit islands preventing buses to come all the way to the transit island and board in the like. And then were also proposing a number of new Parking Zones for the zones as well as 8 new passenger loading zones so this will provide a very specific space for people to pick up and drop off passengers wanting to access Market Street between 8th and 3rd and again this is for private vehicles tncs and now they have very specific locations where they can safely pick up and drop off passengers. For market vaoet is proposing six painted safety zones this is a painted treatment, this is an extension of the curb delineated with safe hip posts, this treatment really prioritizes Pedestrian Safety it shortens the distance pedestrians are walking through the crosswalk and exposed to traffic, it improves visibility and slows vehicles, turning vehicles. I finally want to discuss the effects of traffic through the safer Market Street proposals. We did a very comprehensive traffic analysis to understand what the impact may be. We found that 3050 of these vehicles would be diverted off of Market Street and when we allocate today the areas north and south of Market Street, this is about 35 increase this was not found to be a significant impact. As you might expect, west of 6th street, it would be less noticeable, east of 6th street it would be a little more noticeable, over time, were confident this will dissipate more so when people become more accustomed to the restrictions and finding new routes or transitioning to walking or biking or transit. Then finally i just want to touch on the Implementation Plan. Weve been working with the paint shop, the meter shop closely to have a coordinated Implementation Plan to minimize the impact, we also have secured digital Message Signs, so with vehicles are approaching the intersection prior to full implementation they are aware that safer Market Street is coming and even after implementation, well leave them up for a period of time so people have a transition time in seeing that in advance, as well as the permanent signs and then finally we have partner witched the sfmta parking control officers as well as sfpd for enforcement. With the dial Message Signs the permanent sign and is parking control officer, we are confident that it will be very obvious, the movements that are permissible to turn around a parking control officer will be difficult and if and when that happens, we have sfpd available to cite violations. So, if there are any questions. Thank you, members of the board, questions or comments of staff . We have a a number of members of the public. Imederbacker i would like to hear members of the public first. Thank you. I just want to thank you for hearing the comments and i just want to stress that its really important to remember that reducing the volume of turning vehicles at these intersections for the 20 most dangerous intersections of the city, reducing the volume is the way were going to stop these crash and is thats the best thing we could do for vision vao er row this year mr. Chairman we have plenty of members of the public would wish to address the board on this matter, and some of them we do have an overflow room and so i will call about 5 names ahead so that people in that room when they hear their name can make their way here. calling speaker names . Theyre the first five. Herbert winer, i can approve the regulation of automobile collisions, automobiles colliding against other automobiles automobiles running over pedestrians but if youll notice on this chart, 3 includes bicycles running over pedestrians. Now this has to be carefully regulated too. Bicycles are moving vehicles. They have the same rights and responsibilities as automobiles. So, this plan definitely has to address this and i want to see bicycles really regulated the same way that automobiles are and especially riding on the sidewalk on Market Street because its very dangerous. I have seen it happen all the time, so you have to regulate the bicycles as well as the automobiles, they can be equally dangerous. Suppose for instance in the future you eliminate all automobiles running over pedestrians but then bicycles could run over pedestrians are you then going to call a vision vao er row when deaths occur because bicycles run over pedestrians you have to give this equal attention. Thank you. Next speaker, please. calling speaker names . Good afternoon. Good afternoon, my name is shawn ben ward, i lived in San Francisco on and off for probably 23, 24 years i ride a bike, and walk but i also own a casing i found improvements to Market Street to be a favorable one from my experience of live ining the city, it is clear that every time theres a bik lane built, theres more use by the fact that i notice its more crowded. Toing the hyperbola regarding the bicyclist and is the conditions with pedestrians a little overblown, i know it happens but not the extent that people would like to make it, but definitely whats going on on Market Street is a good thing ill like to see it extended and extend it, thank you. Next speaker, please. calling speaker names . Good afternoon. My name is [inaudible] gravis and i teach the city mandated course for new cab drivers at the taxi driver institute, ive been teaching for 20 years now. One of the things i teach is pedestrian and vehicle and bicycle safety. New cab drivers get into an average of three accidents a year, thats a National Figure and youre saying why am i saying the thing thats bad about new cab drivers . Well, thats because tnc drivers are basically new cab drivers all the time. The job is not designed to be something that youre going to do 40 50 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. You dont ever treat it like a profession. The few people who actually do treat it like a profession, those are are the rare ones, so what youve got, what was the figure we heard today 16 thousand drivers out there thats basically 16 thousand nonprofessional drivers out there on the streets having an excessive number of accidents because they think driving a driver professionally is the same thing as driving their own car. Thank you. calling speaker names . I thought you were finished, sorry. Do i not get my 30 seconds . Sorry, encouraging the tnc companies will just encourage reducing the working conditions back to the 1900s where the drivers had to own their own vehicles own their own insurance and canter covered by workmans comp, thats not the San Francisco way we want to make sure the drivers are covered no matter what company they work for and the only thing that is shared by these Transportation Network companies, the thing thats shared is the risk and the Public Safety. Theyre not sharing their [inaudible]. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Next speaker , please. calling speaker names . Good afternoon, nicole fer rar ra with walk San Francisco i want to thank the mta for putting forward this project, as you all know, Market Street is one of the 6 of street that is accounts for over 60 of severe and fatal injuries in San Francisco for pedestrian and is the Market Street project will use quick low Cost Effective treatments to get to those most dangerous traffic behaviors that lead to people losing their lives losing their limbs in San Francisco so walk sf fully supports these februaries measures and so do our member we gathered a few hundred mignons to a petition to you all so you should be getting those or youve gotten those in your email inbox however theres one tech company that doesnt support this project, that has been kind of silent on vision zero and has shown no responsibility as a company to support Traffic Safety especially evidenced by their opposition to this project and to spreading rumors about this project and thats uber, so other Ride Share Companies like lift have signed on the Taxi Division of the sfmta has worked closely on mission vao er rho as we just heard so in the spirit that uber has spread, i would like to invite anyone who has a cell phone to take it out, leave it on silent and i dont know if this works with the overhead if you have an uber app, please pull it up, click on it and delete it. [laughter]. So, until uber starts to support safety, i want to challenge everybody to choose other methods to get around. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. [applause]. calling speaker names . Good afternoon, my name is paul valdez, long time Mission District resident and a member of the San Francisco bicycle coalition, last year i participate ined the Community Outreach meetings regarding the safer Market Street project

© 2025 Vimarsana