Transcripts For SFGTV Building Inspection Commission 2024071

SFGTV Building Inspection Commission July 12, 2024

When prompted, enter one and zero to be entered into the queue. When you are called for Public Comment, please mute the device that you are listening to the meeting on, and when it is your time to speak, you will be prompt today do so. The number and the log in will also be scrolling across the screen. Public comment during the meeting is limited to three minutes per speaker unless otherwise established. Speakers are requested, but not required, to state their name. Sfgtv, please show the office of Small Business slide. Today, we will start with a reminder that the Small Business commission is the official public forum to voice your opinions and concerns about policy that affect the Economic Vitality of San Francisco. The office of Small Business is your best place to get information about doing business in San Francisco during the local emergency. If you need assistance during this time, you can find us online or via telephone, as always, our services are free of charge. Before we get started, id like to thank sfgtv for coordinating the meeting and the live stream, and to jane smith for mediating the comment slide. Item 1. Clerk item 1, roll call. [roll call] clerk mr. President , you have a quorum. Thank you. Well, first, i am delighted to say we have three outstanding leaders in Public Service today. Clerk commissioner laguana, do you want me to call item 2 . Oh, yes, call item 2. Clerk item 2, presentation on small basis recovery. Continues discussion on Small Business recovery and rebuilding, presentation, and discussion from the San Francisco municipal transportation agency, treasurer, treasurer and Tax Collector, and the Planning Department on Small Business recovery and rebuilding and discussion of relevant recommendations made to the Economic Recovery Task force. Commissioners, please note, we have a limited amount of time for each presenter due to their schedules, so limit your time in chat. Were going to budget roughly two minutes per person. If we have more time, well circle back. Mr. Tumlin, thank you for being here. Thank you, mr. President. Im going to be reviewing our transportation recovery plan. There is a lot of material that i can present, but i would like some time guidelines about the length of time you would like me to present versus q a, and if theres a specific topic you would like me to address, i can do so accordingly. I think other commissioners can jump in here, but i think probably the biggest item we recommended to ertf was around the shared Spaces Program. Welcome updates about that, but there are a few more items that commissioners would ask questions about. I think they would appreciate an opportunity to ask as many questions as possible, but we want you to convey whatever you think would be interest of us, so well just muddle our way through. We budgeted about 40 minutes for you. Okay. Ill spend more time for details getting into the q a. Ill share my screen. Are you seeing my screen . We are. Excellent. Let me go into there we go. All right. So good morning, commissioners. Im jeffrey tumlin. Im the director of the San Francisco municipal transportation agency, and as many of you know, one of the things that we do as an agency is supporting the overall San Francisco economy. Recovery cannot happen without mobility. People need to get to work, get to services needed, move around, and we face fundamental constraints in our Mobility System, specifically, that our streets are not getting any wider. So we needed to figure out how to let our streets move the greatest number of people, especially for people who dont have many choices. Last week, we saw the greatest congestion in the region since the city opened up, and we are worried that we are going to see the greatest congestion ever in this region. We are working with c. T. A. And other regional agencies, and were very nervous about what we see. Even today, where we think the economy is maybe about 15 open, were within 10 of hitting the traffic levels that existed precovid. It takes only a relatively small percentage shift away from transit towards driving to reach rather catastrophic levels of congestion, and this is related to simple mobility. Driving a car is super convenient. It takes you from any point a to point b, and during this time, you have the ability to have built in social distancing. The problem with driving a car is it takes up more than ten times the space moving someone in a car versus any other kind of communication including a socially distant muni bus or train. So if our streets are not getting any wider, we dont have any ability to move more cars than we did back in january. Indeed, we dont have much ability to move more cars than were moving today. There simply isnt space to support the San Francisco economy except by emphasizing the most Space Efficient modes of transportation which creates a set of conundrums for us in this precovid era. Muni lines that are full of people still get caught in congestion especially in the south of market grid for people vying to get onto the bay bridge. That turns into loss of time for muni, and that turns into a capacity loss and frequency loss for muni because were not able to turn our buses around as frequently. Now this loss of capacity and frequency also creates a Public Health issue for our essential workers because it cuts our ability to offer social distancing on our bus by the same percentage as our travel time losses, and were starting to see this all over San Francisco right now, and were wanting to try to get ahead of the problem really quickly so we can continue to manage our streets to maximize the flow of people and particularly to Pay Attention to who we are serving. So all of our work at the moment for every single line of business at the sfgtv is being pulled into what were calling our transportation recovery plan. We look at each of the stages of reopening the economy to figure out what does the Mobility System need to do in order to do that. Everything from turning the parking meters onto phasing in the meter system to when the taxi fares and other things need to adjust. Everything is oriented around Covid Recovery and specifically our role in reopening the economy. The San Francisco economy cannot reopen without mobility in place, and indeed, our Financial Stability is largely dependent on the return of business in San Francisco. Thats what we depend on, is people doing their business in San Francisco not only from business tax, but from the fares we collect. We also know that now is a really challenging time to be making major changes to the Mobility System, but we have no choice but to make some pretty radical changes. Most of our sources of revenue are down by 80 to 100 . Weve got to make some changes to our system just to survive, but also be able to take our services and deliver them to people who need it the most. Its a hard time to be making changes to the system given that we cant hold a conventional public hearing, and many of the people who we care the most about have the least ability to participate in forums like this. So were trying to invent a series of ways of engaging people to be able to do very rapid change aimed at supporting the Financial Sustainability of the city and its Small Businesses for the people who need it the most. So were trying to take every community forum, either through a communitybased organization or through our board of supervisors offices as well as other techniques in the field to be able to reach out to people who are typically not involved in government services. We want to do more experimentation, meaning try things out on the streets. So instead of going through a year of public hearings and planning processes, to do some experimentation on the streets as a way to get feedback. We are learning a lot from our slow streets experimentation that is informing how were going to move forward from ther there. Were thinking have you quantity thai thinking very quantitatively system wide. For example, should we be measuring our street impact and how our streets serve people . And more importantly, how should we be reaching out to Community Members to solicit their feedback based upon arthur Actual Experience with our experiments in order to be able to either make adjustments, make them permanent or cancel them altogether and move onto something else. So today, were going to be talking about how were going to use those different techniques to address those challenges around biking, transportation, neighborhood corridors, and commercial demand. As most of you know, covid has hit muni really hard. Back in april, as a result of the successful efforts that we did in order to probability our right lane in order to protect our vulnerable workforce, we needed to cut about 60 of muni hours. We eliminated the rail system and retreated into a position of radical resiliency, throwing all of our resources at the muni lines that served the most people, that concentrated on residents and neighborhoods that had the least access to services and to employment. Like focusing on our major institutions, like the hospitals, and doing a period of adjustment to ensure that no one was way too far from muni services. And this radical resiliency was w what allowed us to survive. We have the lowest rate of covid among our workforce and passengers. Weve had a very small percentage of our workforce catch covid, and all of them recovered, which is very different from some of our sister communities. The geography of San Francisco mobility and the geography of our San Francisco workforce is very different than San Francisco general. The neighborhoods are mostly empty, but our commercial districts are full of activity, and its coming back even greater in our neighborhood commercial districts. So we focused service where it was needed the most. Even in a time of service set backs, we had to increase our level of Service Delivery on critical corridors like mission street, like the 8 and the 9 serving Visitacion Valley and all of the shaded areas on this map, which are socalled areas of concern, concentration of lower income neighborhoods and people of color. Making sure that people had service was extremely important to us. Weve also maintained everyones health based on the c. D. C. S covid guidelines, but i want to make you aware, were having to pass up a lot of passengers as buses reach their capacity of limit, and as many of you know who take muni, were experiencing severe crowding. We need to find ways to protect the safety of our passengers rather than relying on something as simple as the distance of our passengers. We believe that the United States is the only country that is only for social distance on Public Transit. Almost all of the asian and European Countries have focused on more distant and effective distancing strategies. We cannot move more people than were moving today without social distancing. We lost about 30 of our Service Hours due to direct impacts of covid. We gained back some Service Hours due to the increase in congestion. Were worried were going to lose more of those gains and suffer even more congestion, and the social distance goals in transit result in another twothirds service cut. So all of that adds up to between a 70 and 80 service cut, which is the equivalent of the loss of all of the traffic lanes on the bay bridge, golden gate bridge, richmondsan raphael bridge, and san mateo bridge. It is about the loss of capacity for 600,000 people every day, and this is going to stand in the way of our economic recovery. That said, we are looking at solutions. Part of the solution relies on the data of the system that we had duriwe system travel time that we had during the shelter in place. Interestingly, we achieved zero travel time savings on the corridors we had only commercial travel lanes because our last decades of investment in travel lanes in corridors really worked. So one of the questions is should we be extending our transitonly lane network in order to allow our protected Transit Network to be protected from congestion and to allow those streets to move more people and particularly people with the fewest choices. So were going to be talking to the board of supervisors in the form of the sfcta commission today. Well also be talking to the m. T. A. Board tuesday of next week about advancing emergency temporary transit only lanes on our key corridors as a Pilot Program that would be designed to sunset 120 days after the end of the state of emergency. So were starting the conversation with Community Members right now. Were looking at doing some temporary installation starting in july, and were proposing to use this temporary installation as our process for Gathering Community feedback, for measuring the results, for measuring the unintended consequences, collecting significant data, and then, at some point immediately after that or within 120 days of the emergency order expiring, going back and doing a more formal process for either pursuing legislation for making those transit lanes permanent or adjusting them somehow or removing them if they didnt work as we had hoped. This is a very different way of working compared to how government conventionally does its programming. Typically, a transit only lane planning would take between two and five years of Community Analysis and detailed workshops and arguing. Were proposing to do a detailed twotothreemonth analysis. So our First Tranche would be getting some assistance on mission and places where congestion is already starting and we know its going to get worse in august. Looking at pieces of masonic and presidio and putting some upgrades on lanes near laguna honda and bosworth. There are chances were going to take on this project. Were going to want to look at having the peak parking tow away on sacramento and clay streets perhaps be all day, or on 19 avenue, having a conversation with caltrans about having an h. O. V. Lane on 19 avenue in the curb lane. So not easy questions, particularly on the time horizon that well be working on. We also know that Public Transit will be hobbled due to the financial crash for years to come. Our parking protected Bikeway Network in the south of market and our slow streets, particularly on streets like page and lake and sanchez street, as well as streets throughout the sunset have been wildly successful. Our slow streets in particular are attracting people on bikes and skate boards and scooters and walkers and wheelchairs in a way that weve never seen before, and particularly in a way that matches the actual age, ethnicity and neighborhood demographics of the areas that theyre service. So one of the questions that we ask is should we connect our investments together in order to allow all san franciscans of all ages and ethnic groups to be able to get to their neighborhood commercial district and to their Employment Centers in San Francisco because the advantage of biking and scootering and wheelchairing is they have exactly the same geometric space efficiency as muni does. So heres our existing network of facilities that actually attract a broad array of users. As you can see, this is a deeply disconnected network. Its like as if the interstate highway system in the United States randomly turned into travel roads. So weve been trying to make recent expansion in the last couple of months, that weve installed in the last six months or intend to. This is a much better network, but its still super gappy. Weve done the work thats easy but not the work thats necessary in order to pull these streets into an interconnected citywide neighborhood and one that serves the neighborhoods, again, with the fewest mobility choi choices. We need to make sure San Francisco have multiple mobility devices. This means we need to not only expand bikes and scooters, but getting those devices to people with lower income. And it means, you know, engaging further and making sure that we can expand the neighborhood and have networks feel like these services are actually something for them thats useful for them and indeed yields with the tradeoffs, such as the loss of parking that comes with the establishment of bike shore stations or the potential spillover of traffic from one street to the next street if we were to advance our slow streets program. Were spending a lot of time in our neighborhood commercial corridors. The first thing we did was invest in 450 neighborhood and curbside drop off zones so that people could do their business. That has been significantly successful, and now, were investing in the shared Spaces Program. I believe as of this weekend, we had 385 applications for various ve

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