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