Municipal Transportation Agency - Regular Meeting

CALLING THE JANUARY 20, 26 REGULAR MEETING OF THE MUNICIPAL TRANSPORTATION AGENCY BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND PARKING AUTHORITY COMMISSION TO ORDER. SECRETARY SILVA, PLEASE CALL THE ROLE.

ON THE ROLE, DIRECTOR CHEN. PRESENT. CHEN, PRESENT. DIRECTOR FELDER. PRESENT. FELDER, PRESENT. DIRECTOR INSEE. Present. Hinzi, present. Chair Tarloff? Present. Tarloff, present. We are expecting Directors Kahina, Hemminger, and Henderson to join us this afternoon. For the record, I note that Director Hinzi is attending this meeting remotely. Director Hinzi is reminded that she must appear on camera throughout the meeting and in order to speak or vote on any items. Places you on item number three, the ringing and use of cell phones and similar sound producing electronic devices are prohibited at this meeting. The chair may order the removal from the meeting room any person responsible for the ringing or use of a cell phone or other device. Please also note that because we have quite a few items today and many in the audience, we do ask that all members of the audience maintain order and not speak out of turn or aloud from the audience area. This includes clapping or booing. If you want to show support or opposition to an item, you can do so silently with a thumbs up, a thumbs down, a wave of the hands. We thank you for your cooperation this afternoon. Places you on item four, approval of minutes for the January 6th regular meeting. Directors, are there any changes to the minutes?

Seeing none, we'll now open public comment for item four for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There will be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime in when the time is up. Any speakers can come up to the podium at this time for the minutes.

Good afternoon, Dr. Kirschbaum and board members. My name is Charles Rathbone. In more than 50 years in the San Francisco taxi business, I've had the privilege of wearing many hats.

And when capacity- SPEAKER 1 Sir, I'm sorry to interrupt. Are you hoping to make any comments on our meeting from our last meeting, the minutes? Did you have changes?

SPEAKER 2 Oh, excuse me. I thought this was public comment. Sorry.

SPEAKER 1 Oh, yes. General public comment will be item nine. Thank you.

SPEAKER 2 Any other speakers for the minutes? I'm seeing none in the audience and no accommodation requests.

Colleagues may have a motion and a second to approve the minutes.

So moved.

Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On the motion to approve the minutes, Director Chen?

Aye.

Chen, aye. Director Felder?

Aye.

Felder, aye. Director Hemminger?

Aye.

Hemminger, aye. Director Hinze? Aye. Hinze, aye. Chair Tarloff? Aye. Tarloff, aye. Thank you. The minutes are approved. Thank you. Please call the next item. Places you on item number five, communications. I have none. Thank you. Please call the next item. Places you on item number six, the director's report.

Good afternoon. On January 7th, the Public Transit Revenue Measure District was established in accordance with Senate Bill 63 to authorize the placement of a sales tax measure on the November ballot. This ballot measure would fund public transit in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara, with a proposed one cent sales tax in San Francisco and a half cent sales tax in the other counties. SB 63 allows the measure to go on the ballot by either a district board action or a voter-led initiative. Voter initiatives need 50% plus one to succeed. Funding measures placed on the ballot by elected bodies must get 2 thirds of the votes to pass. At the January 7th meeting, a coalition of stakeholders and voters, the Connected Bay Area Transit Committee, announced that it has drafted a proposed measure that complies with SB 63 and stated its intent to pursue a petition gathering effort to qualify the measure. Given the effort by the Connected Bay Area Transit Committee, the District Board voted not to place the measure on the ballot themselves. Members concluded that polling shows consistently strong support for a voter-led initiative and that it would have the best chance of passing in November. The next step is for the coalition to collect 186,000 qualified signatures by June 3rd to put the measure on the November ballot. If it qualifies for the ballot, the coalition measure would require 50% plus one to pass. shifting gears to something of regional significance, but with a lot of activity concentrated in San Francisco. We are preparing for the Super Bowl, which is coming to the Bay Area on Sunday, February 8th. We are saddened that we will not be making an appearance in that game, which will be played at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. But there will be many events in San Francisco leading up to and celebrating the Super Bowl. So we're working with other city agencies to make sure people can get around and are aware of the many street closures and muni reroutes. The hub of activity in San Francisco will be the Moscone Center, with other activations throughout the city. The city has launched the website sf.gov slash Super Bowl, and travel information is available at sfmta.com slash Super Bowl. More information will be added as we get closer to February 8th. I also wanted to remind the Board that we're closing our Potrero Division 60-foot Trolley Coach Bus Facility on February 13th to prepare it for much-needed upgrades. Then we'll be implementing modest meeting service changes on February 14th that aim to reduce crowding and support the closure of the Potrero Yard. Transit Director Brent Jones talked about these changes at our last Board meeting, and the public can learn more about them at sfmti.com slash servicechanges. I also wanted to share that construction began this month on the Transbay Howard Streetscape Improvement Project. The project covers Howard Street from the Embarcadero to 4th Street. It's intended to make the streets safer and more welcoming for everyone. This is a San Francisco Public Works project funded by the Transbay Redevelopment Funds, but we are helping with design and outreach. Upgrades include improving street landscaping and lighting, improving safety and accessibility, including a protected two-way bikeway, upgrading traffic signal infrastructure and roadway repaving, a lane reduction, and parking and loading changes to support businesses and to accommodate safety improvements and emergency egress. We think that this is going to be a project that not only increases safety, but also creates a sense of place and improved livability. Public Works is overseeing the construction, which is expected to last through late 2028. Part of the reason for that extra time has been built into the construction schedule to allow crews to pause work during major events at the Moscone Center, which the project abuts. Crews are starting with potholing this month, with major construction to begin after the Super Bowl 60 events. Also this month, we are celebrating Black History Month. We are decorating one of our cable cars to honor Black History Month. The SFMTA has a proud history of African-American leadership from the past to the present, and we're happy to honor our black and African-American employees, leaders, and riders. On Friday, February 6th at 2 p.m., this cable car will depart from the cable car barn at 1201 Mason Street for its inaugural ride. We'd love for members of the board to join us for that special ride, and then the car will be in regular service for the public to enjoy throughout February. Lastly, I wanted to share that our Latino community liaison, Beatrice, recently appeared on the SFGov TV community service program, Somos SF, to discuss how our work supports the city's economy and residents' daily lives. She highlighted our free and reduced muni fare programs and the options we offer to help people pay fare or parking citations. These programs and others, of course, make transportation more affordable. Somos SF, or We Are San Francisco, is a Spanish-language program with English subtitles. This interview is part of our effort to reach our city's Latino and immigrant communities and provide them with trusted and accurate information about our services. Thank you.

Thank you, Director Kirschbaum. I would like to open public comment. But before I do so, I would like to remind members of the audience that they may provide comment on item six, which is the director's report at this time. As a reminder, Director Kirschbaum spoke on the following topics, a legislative update, which is a regional measure, Super Bowl, the Potrero Yard closure and Muni service changes, Transbay Howard construction beginning, Black History Month at the cable car ride, and SFMTA being featured on SOMOS San Francisco. If you feel the director missed addressing a topic, you may comment on that during item nine, which is general public comment. If you are here to speak on an item later in today's agenda, please wait to make your comment until that item is called. With that, public comment on the director's report is now open for one minute each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have one minute each. There'll be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. Any speakers can come up to the podium at this time to provide comment on the director's report.

Good afternoon, board. Your friendly Griffin Lee here, representing Connected SF staff. A couple of things on the director's report. One, we're really disappointed with how lack of transparent and visible it was during the process of forming this Special Regional Measure District. There were updates certainly on SB 6-3 at these meetings, I think leading up to October. And then we've been pretty consistent here since October, and we did not hear about any information regarding the district forming. I would consider it a hidden operation, and there needs to be more transparency on how these things are getting on the ballot and how these things are forming. Secondly, on the Howard Streetscape Project, we are supportive of street safety. However, trying to remove, and actually in this project, removing lanes reduction for automobile traffic does not represent an equitable strategy that I think we'll be hearing a little bit more later today on. Lastly- Thank you.

Your time is up.

Say that again?

Your time is up.

Oh, okay. Thank you so much.

Any other speakers in the room to provide comment on the director's report?

This is strictly for the director's report?

Correct, on the items that Director Kirschbaum shared about. Thank you. Any other speakers in the room for public comment on the director's report?

Hi, my name is Richard Bernal. I'm a body shop supervisor for Muni, Madam Chair. My question to the director is, has the legislation been written for the ballot measures for November? And if so, when will we start to see those ads placed inside the transit vehicles? For example, on the bus and the ad signs, when will we start to see those take place? Because we're less than a year away, and any good salesman will start promoting the sales right away. Thank you.

Thank you. Other speakers for the director's report? I'm seeing none in the room. We do have one accommodation request. Speaker, you've been unmuted. You have one minute.

Hi, my name is Michael Petrelis and I am calling in to make a comment about the Director's report. I appreciate the report, especially the information about the upcoming Super Bowl game. And I wish to lodge a complaint that for the public comment on this item, you have reduced the time to just 60 seconds. I believe that all members of the public deserve a full two minutes to comment on the director's report. You have 30 seconds.

Thank you. No other speakers.

Thank you. We will now close public comment. Colleagues, do you have any questions or comments about Director Kirschbaum's report? Seeing none, Secretary Silva, will you please call the next item?

Places you on item number seven, the Citizens Advisory Council report. We have no report. places you on item number eight, new or unfinished business by board members. And today we have the election of the board chair and the vice chair. I will move forward with the election of the chair. Do we have any nominations for the position of chair? VICE CHAIR KAHINA?

Is the mic on? OK. Colleagues, I would like to nominate Janet Tarloff as chair of the board. Janet, over this past year, there was a lot of change. And I believe in this direction that we've had with Janet, we have steadied the ship. And given all the different changes that are coming ahead, it's important for us to maintain that consistent, level-headed leadership that we have in our chair.

Thank you. I accept the nomination. Are there any other nominations for chair?

Seeing none, I can close those nominations.

Let's close nominations. And then we will need to open public comment on that piece. Very good. We will open public comment for two minutes each on this action item.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each, given this is an action item. There will be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. Any speakers can come up to the podium at this time. This is for the election of the chair. I'm seeing none in the room and no accommodation requests.

We will now close public comment. Secretary Silva, do we need a motion and a second or?

You do not need a second. We can just go ahead and call the roll.

Oh, please. Will you call the roll?

On the motion to elect Director Janet Tarloff as chair. Director Chen.

Aye.

Chen, aye. Director Felder?

Aye.

Felder, aye. Director Hemminger?

Aye.

Hemminger, aye. Director Henderson? Aye. Henderson, aye. Director Hinzey? Aye. Hinzey, aye. Director Kahina? Aye. Kahina, aye. And Director Tarloff?

Aye.

Tarloff, aye. Thank you. That motion passes. Congratulations, Chair Tarloff.

Thank you. We will now open nominations for vice chair. Is that correct? That's correct. And I would, colleagues, if you will allow me, I would like to nominate Director Kahina. for continuing in her vice chair role. And just to say that over the past year, as I've been serving in this position, having you in the vice chair position has been tremendously valuable to me. You've brought the perspective of more time on the board, as well as a real depth of knowledge in our area, in our purview. And it's really been invaluable to me. And I just would like to thank you very, very much for all of your support. And I wholeheartedly would like to nominate you for the position. Are there any other nominations that we should take into consideration? Well then, let's open public comment on this action item for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There will be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. Any speakers can come up to the podium at this time. This is for the election of the vice chair. Seeing none in the room and no accommodation requests.

We will now close public comment. Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On the motion to elect Stephanie Kahina as vice chair. Director Chen.

Aye.

Chen, aye. Director Felder.

Aye.

Felder, aye. Director Hemminger. Aye. Hemminger, aye. Director Henderson. Aye. Henderson, aye. Director Hinze. Aye. Hinze, aye. Director Kahina. Aye. Kahina, aye. Director Tarlov. Aye. Tarlov, aye. Thank you. That motion passes. Congratulations, Vice Chair Kahina.

Thank you. Secretary Silva, please call the next item.

Places you on item number nine, general public comment. Members of the public may address the board of directors on matters that are within the board's jurisdiction and are not on today's calendar.

We will now open public comment for matters not on today's agenda for one minute each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have one minute each. There will be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. I do have some speaker cards here. I'm going to go ahead and call some names. Charles Rathbone, Dante Vickers, Steve Ramos, Richard Johnson.

And directors, in the interest of brevity, I will simply ask you to check your email, please, for an item that I sent you last week on the subject of taxi medallions. And that concludes my comment. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. My name is Dante Vickers. I represent Local 1414. Local 1414 understands the financial challenges facing the agency, and we recognize the need for responsible planning. But we strongly believe that balancing the budget by cutting working conditions, benefits, or essential staffing will harm the SFMTA's long-term ability to provide safe and reliable service. and it will hurt the city and the public we serve. First, local 1414 members continue reporting to their assigned work sites and provides essential service during the pandemic, even at risk to ourselves and our families. We help San Francisco keep running during a historic public health emergency, and many of our members feel those sacrifices have never been properly acknowledged. Second, we provide critical service with the within the transportation modes are available or inadequate especially during disruptions to electrified operations a clear example is an upcoming portrayal yard project where diesel hybrid buses will be needed to help coverage service changes and keep the city moving once again local 1414 is stepping up because the system depends on you sir your time is concluded next speaker

I could also call more speaker cards, Timothy Trickle, Philip Lim, Richard Bernal.

Hi. My name is Richard Johnson, and I don't know if I'm going to be speaking as much as the violations to the Hayes Street closure. We are going on week 58 now. And I am so frustrated at what's going on here. I'm not sure if the frustration is driven more by the inaction or the silence of both this board and the director. of the SFMTA. But I feel you need to start pushing the politics aside and get to doing your job. You're obviously not doing your job because it's 58 weeks of violations. It's encouraged the permit holder to become even more aggressive of not just being comfortable in violating your permit. It's also taken upon himself to do legal action against our our group because we are doing the documentation that you as an agency should be doing. And to me, I just think enough is enough. It's like we have so much craziness going on. It's time to step up and do your job.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hello. I speak quick. All right. We're being asked to do, excuse me, my name is Timothy Trickle. I'm a 7220 Automotive Transit Stop Supervisor at Kirkland Division. We are being asked to do, again, more with less. When frontline maintenance and supervisor coverage is reduced without adding resources, the work does not disappear. It concentrates. That concentration increases fatigue, delays, repairs, and directly impacts service reliability and public safety. The public ultimately pays for these decisions, both as taxpayers and riders. They fund this system, and they trust that these buses that are operating on the city's streets are safe and reliable and properly maintained. When staffing is stretched too thin, defects take longer to fix, buses go out late or not at all, and risks increase. Riders feel it first, especially seniors, people with disabilities, and other people who depend on transit to move throughout the city. Management emphasizes accountability, and I agree. Accountability requires documented, verifiable savings. Alignment with existing MOUs and consistent application across divisions. Anything less will shift risk to workers, riders, and the public. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, members of the SFMTA Board. My name is Phillip Lim. I'm a transit shop supervisor at Woods Maintenance. Woods Maintenance supports 265 buses with approximately 160 employees. And we're responsible for keeping those buses safe and reliable for daily service. Woods Maintenance has already implemented significant cost controls. Since 2020, we've reduced our parts inventory by 35% and cut overtime usage by 50%. Since 2023, we have operated with 16 vacancies. nine mechanics, three machinists, and four supervisors. Yet we continue to meet the service demands despite these shortages. We are now being asked to make additional staffing reductions and operational cuts. This comes at a time when the mayor has stated that saving Muni is non-negotiable, and San Francisco cannot function as a world-class city without safe, reliable, and affordable public transit. At the same time, we are not reducing service. With the upcoming closure of Potrero, all rubber tire yards will absorb increased service demands. More runs, more mileage equals more maintenance. Cutting maintenance, staffing, or eliminating early shifts under these conditions will undermine reliability and increase risk. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, Madam Chair, again. My name is Richard Bernal. I'm a body shop supervisor for SFMTA. I'm here to talk about the vacancies and the resignations that we have received, six in one year resignations. And just a quick little resignation letter is, is as an employee, I no longer feel the same level of respect, value, or transparency that once existed. The lack of clear communication regarding future plans has contributed to the declining morale, which has been difficult for me to navigate. It has been also challenging to see the supervisors under constant stress and unable to provide answers during the limit due to limited transparency. from higher levels. I'll end with this Jeffrey Tumblin quote, and I quote, we should not and will not balance the budget on the backs of the very people who carried this agency through the crisis. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. My name is Steve Ramos. I am a 7381 mechanic. I'm here with my fellow members behind me to give you a little bit of a rundown of what we deal with day to day. We currently have 30-, 40-, and 60-foot new flyer buses plus battery electric buses. Even within the 40- and 60-foot buses, we're dealing with multiple variations, different service requirements, different parts, different issues. That kind of variation makes maintenance harder, slower repairs, and complicates parts and troubleshooting. Despite that, our workforce continues to keep these buses running. We have 30-foot coaches, which pose its own mechanical issues in themselves, plus an extensive fleet of new battery electric buses. that's why i need to be clear discussions about workforce reduction and cutting premium shifts is alarming we already are short staffed and are already keeping muni running with one arm tied behind our back any reduction in staffing or coverage is seriously impact service and reliability to the city thank you thank you next speaker

Good afternoon, board. Griffin Lee back here representing Connected SF staff. There's probably a million things I could talk about right now, but I think the one thing I've been stressing, we've been stressing a little bit over the last couple board meetings is experimenting with the potential of only opening the front door of buses to test and better recoup FAIRS. FAIR EVASION IS STILL A BIG THING. I THINK THIS WOULD BE IN THE BEST INTEREST OF NOT ONLY RIDERS AND THEIR SAFETY FOR SAFETY PURPOSES BUT ALSO IN THE BEST INTEREST OF MTA COLLECTING MORE REVENUE. UNDERSTAND THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES THAT COME WITH THAT EXPERIMENT SUCH AS POTENTIAL SLOWER BUS SERVICE BUT SOMETHING WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND THE STAFF POTENTIALLY LOOK INTO AND EVALUATE. THANKS SO MUCH.

THANK YOU. NEXT SPEAKER.

Good afternoon, my name is Chris Danny. I'm an assistant supervisor body by shop assistant supervisor was division I'm here with local 1414 and we're deeply concerned about the proposals to eliminate premium shifts as a cost-saving Measure many of these shifts exist to meet real operational needs coverage response maintenance and reliability Cutting them may look good on paper, but it can reduce efficiency and create a bigger problem later. Finally, we urge the Board to evaluate proposals based not only on immediate cost, but also safe reliability and real-world operations. We ask you to take a balanced approach that addresses the budget while protecting the workforce and safe, reliable transit system that San Francisco deserves. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, board. I wanted to take a moment to bring some attention to street safety. Some of the preliminary numbers came out for 2025. Is this on the calendar later? Pardon me, sir.

That is a later agenda item, I believe. All right.

I'll come back.

OK. Any other speakers for general public comment? Item number nine.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board, director. My name is Kerry Ong, 7249 Automotive Mechanic Supervisor, and I work at Woods Division. I understand that we are currently facing an extraordinary budget shortfall and that it calls for some extraordinary measures. I just wanted to highlight one item that, in my view, ineffective. And I want to make sure that cuts, I understand cuts need to be made, but cuts need to be effective. So the 9102 car cleaner sign up just occurred. It's going to take effect February 14th. All the shifts are being switched to 7 a.m. start. Most of our buses start pulling out at 3 a.m., and I'd say about half the yard is out by 6 a.m. So by then, by switching these shifts, getting rid of the premium, it looks good on paper, but with all the buses out, what are they going to clean? That's all I want to say.

Thank you. Any other speakers for general public comment? OK. Not seeing any in the room, I do have one accommodation request. Speaker, you've been unmuted. This is for general public comment. One minute.

hi michael vitrellis again i'm calling to complain about the castro parking lot next to the castro theater we have lost 26 parking spaces in that municipal lot joel ramos of sfmta has emailed me to say that no permits were granted to another planet which now manages the castro theater how is it they were able to get 26 parking spaces without a single permit being issued Joel Ramos has also said that there were no hearings held before 8th took over that entire parking lot. Moving forward, Joel Ramos says that 8th will apply for an agreement to take over that parking lot on Castro Street permanently. We need a public hearing about how we lost 26 public parking spaces on Castro Street without a permit or hearing. Thank you.

Thank you. No other speakers.

Thank you. I just would like to acknowledge that since we have many of our labor partners here today, I want to thank you for coming today. And it was good to hear from you. What was discussed was not agendized, so that's about it that I can say. But I just wanted to say thank you very much for your work. And thank you for being here today. Secretary Silva, please call the next item.

Director, that places you on item number 10, your consent calendar.

Directors, oh, yes. Sorry about that.

These items are considered to be simple or routine and will be acted upon by a single vote unless a member of the board or public requests that an item be taken off consent and heard separately. For all speakers providing comment, please identify which item number you are speaking to. Item 10.1, approving various routine parking and traffic modifications as listed under 10.1A through I in the agenda. That concludes your consent calendar.

Thank you. We will now open public comment for items on the consent calendar for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There will be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. Any speakers can come up to the podium at this time. This is for the consent calendar, item 10.1. Seeing none and no comments and no speakers in the audience and no accommodation requests.

Directors may have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar. So moved.

Second.

Thank you. Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On a motion to approve the consent calendar, Director Chen?

Aye.

Chen, aye. Director Felder?

Aye.

Felder, aye. Director Hemminger?

Aye.

Hemminger, aye. Director Henderson? Aye. Henderson, aye. Director Hinze? Aye. Hinze, aye. Director Kahina? Aye. Kahina, aye. Chair Tarloff? Aye. Tarloff, aye. Thank you. The consent calendar is approved.

Secretary Silva, did I close public comment? I think I may not have. So just to formally close public comment on the consent calendar. Very good. Please call the next item.

Directors, that places you on your regular calendar. Item number 11, taking various actions related to the San Francisco's Street Safety Initiative, including adopting the safe system approach to roadway safety, adopting the SFMTA street safety commitments, and committing to the actions set forth in Mayor Lurie's Street Safety Initiative, Executive Directive 25-06, and the San Francisco Street Safety Act, Board of Supervisors Resolution Number 437-25, and prioritizing areas in the high injury network.

Good afternoon, Chair Tarloff, members of the board. I am Victoria Wise, Streets Director, and I am very excited to bring our street safety policy to the board today. This has been more than a year in the making. Before we dive in, I want to take a moment to thank our staff, our community partners, directors Hinzi, Kahina, and Chen in particular for their leadership on the Vision Zero Committee. Your guidance at that committee has been critical in bringing this item forward today. And also, I want to thank our partners and colleagues, some of them in the audience, like Fire Chief Captain Tracy O'Keefe behind me, Police Department Commander Luke Martin, Public Health Director of Center for Data Science and Department of Public Health Seth Prado. They are not here presently, but they are watching and here in spirit with us today. So we're all working together on this effort. On our agenda today, we will cover some key learnings from the last 10 years of Vision Zero. We will review the mayor's new street safety initiative and the Board of Supervisors Street Safety Act in our own SFMTA street safety commitments that I'll be asking you to adopt today. We will present some of the safety tools in our toolbox and how we might deploy these as part of our targeted safety work. And we will cover some of the guiding framework that shapes where and how we do this work. In December, the Vision Zero Committee voted unanimously to recommend three key actions to the full board today. First, adoption of the safe systems approach. Second, adoption of SFMTA's four street safety commitments, which I will outline to you shortly. And third, commit to the work in the Board of Supervisors Street Safety Act that Supervisor Myrna Melgar championed, and Mayor Lurie's new announced Street Safety Initiative, or mayoral directive, that was announced mid-December of last year. I want to spend some time looking at how we have approached street safety and what we've learned during the last decade. But first, I want to highlight why street safety is so important and why this work matters so much. Traffic deaths and injuries are a public health crisis, nationally recognized public health crisis. Every year in the United States, nearly 43,000 people are killed in traffic crashes. That's about 118 people per day. And fatalities are just the tip of that iceberg, the most severe of outcomes. Every year, more than 2 million people are injured in traffic crashes nationwide. And many of those injuries are life changing. People suffer traumatic brain injuries, major fractures, chronic pains, and lifelong disabilities. Here in San Francisco, that is almost two people a day who are seriously injured, comparable, by the way, to the number of people who experience fentanyl overdoses. The cost of this harm is emotional, It's physical, and it is 100% financial, not only for individuals, but for the entire city. Between 2018 and 2022, the economic costs of all traffic collisions in San Francisco are estimated to be $2.5 billion. That's with a B. This data comes from the budget and legislative analyst report published last year about economic costs and fiscal impacts of traffic collisions in our city. Those are costs borne by families, our healthcare system certainly, emergency services, and responders, employers, and taxpayers. So this isn't about putting a price tag obviously on human life, but I think it demonstrates how important this issue is. Investing resources and working together across all governments, and that's going to be a theme here for my presentation, is both the humane choice and obviously the responsible one. It's an investment in our people, in their health, in their independence, and their ability to fully participate in our city without the fear of being injured or worse. And this supports the safe, multimodal transportation system we need for a strong and thriving San Francisco. Human error will always exist, and our responsibility is to limit the severity of harm when mistakes occur. And that requires coordinated action across governments at every single level. From the beginning, our approach to street safety has been very data driven. San Francisco was actually the first city in the United States to create the High Injury Network, a map that shows where most of the severe crashes and fatalities happen. And what makes San Francisco unique is that our high injury network doesn't just come from the police reports, but actually captures all of the hospital data, which captures 20% of crashes that never get reported to the police department. The High Injury Network helps guide our priorities. Of course, it doesn't limit our safety work to the High Injury Network alone. We do work all over the city. But it does help focus our very limited resources where they make the most difference. To tackle safety on the high injury network, we have rolled out a range of tools. You have all seen them on our streets. Slower walking speeds, a rapid response team that goes out to an intersection where we have fatalities and investigates it right away and proposes immediate changes that we typically do within 24 hours. The quick build program, the Vision Zero quick build toolkit at intersections, left turn safety treatments, lower speed legislation, daylighting. I can go on and on. We do a lot of different changes in the city to address safety. And when we look at this data more closely, it is clear that where crashes happen and who is most affected is not evenly distributed across the city. Equity is central to the agency's mission and all of our transportation work, period. So it has been central to how we approach safety work and will remain so into the future. Why does equity matter in our streets? Because more than half of the high injury network is in the neighborhoods identified as equity priority communities here on the map you see in red. These are areas where we have more low income residents, communities of color, seniors, and people who rely on walking and transit. In fact, in 2025, almost half of all the fatalities happened in these neighborhoods. That's why our focus on the high-injury network and the most vulnerable road users is so important, and it helps us address disproportionate impacts, target longstanding safety gaps, and ensure investments are reaching communities who need them most. So what we've learned. We've been working on Vision Zero for more than 10 years along our key partners at the Department of Public Health and the Police Department. And San Francisco, as I mentioned, was one of the very first cities in the country to adopt Vision Zero, which is now adopted by many, many cities in the United States and actually embraced by the United States Department of Transportation. So as always, we are and we're a city on the cutting edge that innovates and leads. It also means that Vision Zero was built largely from the ground up right here with lots of adjustments and lots of learnings along the way. So our approach has never remained static, and we've made adjustments during this 10-year period. And what we've learned shapes the policy approach that we are bringing to you today. So let's talk about what we've learned. First of all, Data saves lives. It shows where crashes happen so we can focus our resources there. Second, where we invest in safety tools, we see safety improvements across those locations. On streets with quick build projects, bike crashes dropped by 25% and pedestrian crashes dropped by 35% on average across those evaluated corridors. Third, policy matters. Local action isn't enough. State and federal law and regulations are crucial, too. For example, it took decades of advocacy to win AB 43 for speed limits and AB 645 for our speed cameras, with many people in this room today advocating for these changes. Both were first steps, but of course, we need more. The fourth thing we learned is national trends make it harder. Cars are bigger and heavier than ever. Speeding went up during the pandemic. More mass and more speed means crashes are more likely to cause severe injuries or fatalities. And finally, we've evolved. As more cities began adopting Vision Zero and more data was gathered on the causes of crashes, it became clear that reducing serious crashes and fatalities needed to extend beyond the traditional education, enforcement, and engineering approach. Those were the three Es for those of you that were involved in Vision Zero that we had originally started with 10 years ago. And we've come a long way from there. So these lessons all provide important context to the trends we're seeing and the data at hand. And so I'd like to talk about that data. Director Hemminger, you had asked about it last week because there are articles about traffic fatalities dropping by 42% last week from 2025 compared to 2024. That is the lowest level since 2018, and the 2025 totals is the fourth lowest ever recorded. We're obviously grateful that significantly fewer people lost their lives in 2025, but it is still 25 and 25 too many. Last year's drop in fatalities set us on a downward trend, and we're hopeful that this trend continues. At the same time, the average number of fatalities remains between two to three per month here in the city. Unlike national trends in those and other jurisdictions, the average number of fatalities in San Francisco has remained relatively unchanged in the last 10 years. Injury crashes reported in recent years have also been some of the lowest ever recorded. And we're hopeful that in 2025, injury data will be at or slightly below typical levels based on data up to the end of November. We still have to process the December data, and we can finalize those trends and see what's going on. I want to say that without ongoing safety work, outcomes would likely be worse. And I want to pause there and say that again. Without the safety work that San Francisco is doing and based on trends that we're seeing elsewhere, outcomes would have likely been worse than what we're seeing. But that still means we have work to do. So with that, let's look at what is next. Over the last 10 years, we've learned that complex safety challenges cannot be solved with any one tool, no magic tool, or any one agency alone. It makes the whole of government approach to build multiple layers of protection into our transportation so important. The safe system approach is now the national and state standard for street safety, and it was officially established by San Francisco under Mayor Lurie's executive directive in December. Like Vision Zero, it does not rely on perfect behavior from individuals. It means designing streets, vehicles, and systems that recognize our human vulnerability and the fact that we make mistakes. The SAFE system is built on five pillars, each designed to protect people in a different way. Think of it like overlapping safety nets, if you would. If one layer fails, others are still there to protect people, to catch people. And these safety nets are the responsibility of multiple agencies at city, state, and federal levels. City agencies have many tools, but not all of them. And so what we can design and manage at local level is a lot, but we still need state and federal engagement. For example, vehicle design standards, licensing rules, and speed authority require state and federal action. European Union, for instance, requires car makers to design vehicles with the safety of people outside the vehicle in mind, not just the passenger and driver. And so they require softer vehicle fronts, pedestrian detection, and speed-assisted technology be built by default into a vehicle. And these are some of the things that our state and federal partners can hopefully help us with into the future. The safe system is now formalized through the mayoral executive directive, and it establishes the safe system as the foundation of our work, bringing our city in line with, again, state and national best practices. And that is why I'm also asking the board to formally adopt this approach today as part of your vote. We've worked closely with City Hall and our executive directive. It reaffirms that traffic fatalities are serious injuries and are, in fact, a public health crisis, and that safety is shared responsibility across government agencies. And what's unique about this directive is that it's mayor-led. and sets clear direction for citywide collaboration. This is a strong leadership we need and must have to bring the whole of the city government approach to tackling this important issue. So let's dive in to the details of what the new Street Safety Initiative looks like. And it includes very specific and time-bound deliverables and, again, collaboration across multiple agencies. And that's part of the color coding you see here. And I'm asking you today, I'll go through some of these, not everything, but I wanted to put it out because I'm also asking this board to formally adopt and commit the agency to deliver everything that is in mayoral's executive directive. The directive explains how the street safety initiative will be governed, how we'll stay accountable, how we'll use data, what we'll deliver and when, and we'll track progress and share clear updates with you and other members of the public. Many of these actions, by the way, overlap. across agencies and overlap across other policies. So I think we're all rowing in the same direction. In the next 100 days, we'll co-chair with the Department of Public Health and the Police Department a new working group led by the mayor's office. We're going to meet regularly to coordinate our work. And senior leaders from 13 departments that are in some shape or form are part of this work are going to join that working group.

So we're all rowing in the same direction.

We will continue to use data by coordinating with the Department of Public Health to publish the new high injury network. I anticipate publishing that network in the first quarter of this year. And in cooperation with public health, NPD will also improve how we analyze fatalities and injuries, looking at how they intersect with other social and public health issues. We'll start implementing the next phase of daylighting, focusing on vulnerable groups such as seniors. And we'll continue to do our speed safety camera work, which we know is one of the most effective tools that we have. Over the next six months, we'll coordinate with agency partners to roll out the Street Safety Initiative dashboard, and I'll preview some of that with you today. We'll also work with Public Works and PUC to define a process for evaluating safety infrastructure improvements when we're doing work on the street, like after repaving or after PUC comes through and does sewer or water work. How do we bring the street back better? We'll publish the street design review manual with the San Francisco Fire Department. Tracy and I have been working on that for quite some time. And we are going to make it easier for communities to use newly daylit spaces in ways that best serve their neighborhoods through murals and other placemaking enhancements. And we'll continue to coordinate safe pedestrian and bicycle detours when we have construction or special events. You would think that that's pretty routine, but we want to make sure that whenever we have construction, of which we have a lot of people are able to move around safely. We also know, and we've talked about this here, that e-bikes and e-scooters are changing how people move. And our policies and enforcement need to keep pace with these new safety challenges. So we already have a working group established that is strategizing how to tackle safety issues from these devices. San Francisco is no newbie to new micro-mobility devices or We're the hotbed, the testing ground for all of it. And within the next year, we will also release a draft plan in response to the new high injury network, launch a reformed traffic calming program, address corridors and intersections identified by data and residents, and propose improvements, and review and update the street safety initiative that the mayor put together based on the needs and all the different learnings. Our renewed street safety efforts have also had strong leadership and support from the Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Melgar introduced the 2025 Street Safety Act, which clearly outlines many of the same and similar actions that are in mayoral directive. And so today, we want to formally commit to the actions laid out in a Street Safety Act as part of your resolution. We're also bringing forward our own street safety commitments, SFMTA commitments. These commitments were shaped through public engagement throughout 2014 and 20, sorry, 2024, excuse me, and 2025. Starting in May of 24, we conducted extensive outreach, including connecting with other Vision Zero cities, other agencies, and hosting community group listening sessions. We also did a survey with 700 people responding to that. And we heard through all that, very clear calls for safer speeds and protecting vulnerable users. Those were like the top themes that came out from those conversations. We've also stayed closely engaged with district supervisors, advocacy groups, the Vision Zero Coalition, and brought this work through multiple public Vision Zero committee meetings with three of your board members. So what you see on the slide is our street safety commitments that we are asking the board to formally adopt today. They reflect what we expect every major project, policy, and investment to help deliver. To improve street safety, we commit to first, designing and enforcing safer speeds. We know that speed is the number one, the most important factor in crash severity, and managing it is critical to protecting people both inside and outside the vehicle. Second. Protecting the most vulnerable roadway users. That means improving safety for people most likely to be seriously injured in a collision. Third, reducing vehicle miles traveled by improving mobility choices. When we have safe, reliable options that meet different trip needs, we reduce over-reliance on private vehicle and advance the city's climate action goals consistent with the city's climate action plan. And fourth, balancing the efficiency of the transportation modes, ensuring safety throughout the system. So we recognize that people need or want to drive for different purposes, to different trips, that they may rely on vehicle access for their local businesses to do a medical appointment, to whatever services they need to do. So we want to ensure that any street safety changes support vehicle access in the system, too, and that we are balancing it all together. Now let's talk in more detail about our approach and the tools we have to deliver on these commitments. I want to cover our methodology for putting together the draft work plan. A couple of things. First, where are we working? We focus on the high injury network. We focus on equity priority communities. We focus on locations communities have asked for safety improvements and places where we can improve connectivity and close different gaps for different modes on our network. What are we doing? Our safety toolbox, and I'll present it to you in just a minute, is informed by our evaluation reports and industry standards. So for whatever we put on the street, there's always an evaluation that follows. So we learn from it and figure out if these tools are effective. How we're doing this work is through capital project delivery on the left-hand side, including streetscape projects and our quick build program, and then just many, many bread and butter improvements that we make day to day. And when are we doing this work? We're doing it when funding allows, in coordination with other city agencies, like a paving project, so we're strategic. And it's informed, again, by community input. So what I'm presenting today is a fiscally responsible targeted 18-month work plan based on resources and the considerations that I just outlined. So let's dive in. I know that many of you have seen the slide before, but I include it in every single time in every presentation I do because speed is so central to our work here in the agency. We focus on slowing vehicle speeds because of kinetic energy. Even small speed increases can mean the difference between life and death. And as vehicle speeds increase, kinetic energy released in crash increases exponentially. And that's what you see on the slide. So that's why a person hit at 40 miles per hour has a chance of survival of 20%. And if it's at 20 miles per hour, your chances of survival are much, much higher. When we manage speed, we make collisions less likely. And when they do happen, less severe. So the tools that we have are, for instance, for managing speed, you see here our quick build project corridors, ability to reduce speeds, traffic calming program, which we're in the process of reforming, and our speed safety cameras. This is a draft work plan for the next 18 months to help us achieve safe driving speeds. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the details of the work plan, because we went over them in committee, other than to say a couple things. The work plan aligns with the Street Safety Act and the Mayoral Executive Directive. And we do a lot of other bread and butter, what I call it safety work, like replacing reflectivity on our signs, continuing to maintain and run our speed safety and red light camera programs, along with doing bigger projects like streetscape projects on Folsom on 13th and in short order on Transbay Howard. So there's lots of other things that we are doing that is not reflected here, but this is a very targeted, again, financially constrained approach for the next 18 months. As we work towards street safety, we've also been clear that we need to improve how we measure progress. Our goal is to report on both what we're implementing, how much of something we've done, and perhaps more importantly, on the outcomes of those efforts, in addition to tracking, of course, fatality and injury trends. So I wanted to share with you some samples of some of the draft dashboards that we are putting together. On this slide, On the top, we're tracking the number of cumulative miles of speed reduction, a tool we have in our implementation plan, and also included here in the bottom is an example of metric to track outcomes. So this shows a speed study where we see decline in a number of vehicles that are traveling at 10 miles or more above the speed limit pre- and post-implementation of automated speed enforcement. The data also tells us that pedestrians account for the largest percentage of traffic deaths. In 2025, 64% of fatalities were pedestrians. As I've said, the goal is to manage crash forces, especially where people and vehicles mix, like at intersections. So we target safer speeds and improved visibility at those intersections to protect the vulnerable users. We have a whole set of tools that address what's happening at our intersections. Those tools work by either providing separation between modes. The separation can be either in time or in space, or improving visibility at intersections so that everyone can see each other. The tools themselves also include core intersection, changes like high visibility crosswalk and advanced limit lines, and also separating modes by changing some of the traffic signal timing, like giving people a head start when they get a green person walking so everyone can see you crossing the street. So to do some of this work, we use posts and robust speed bumps to encourage slower turns. Left turns in particular have been very successful. And finally, another tool is daylighting. This slide shows our suggested work plan, which, of course, is heavily dependent on the high injury network that's going to come out in the first quarter of 2026. And it also talks about our core intersection treatments, signal changes, rapid flashing beacons, turn safety treatments, and daylighting. Most of it, again, informed by what we're going to see on the 2026 HIN. Included here is another metric on how we might track our progress on building infrastructure for safer crossings, this time an example of left turn safety treatments. So we wanted left turns to be made at slower speeds. And just in case it's not obvious, the reason is when you're turning left, you don't always see the pedestrian crossing out of your left eye behind. And so left turns are actually one of the causes of crashes, very common ones. So that's why we're focused on them. So the top graph shows how many left turn treatments we've done every year. And then the bottom graph shows the outcomes of that, that all treated intersections experienced an average left turn speed below the recommended safe turn threshold of 15 miles per hour. It's important to me that people have choices in how they travel and safe ones. If you want to be able to get anywhere in San Francisco by any mode of travel that you choose and that it's safe for you to do so. And that means that walking, transit, and biking need to be competitive options as well as private vehicles. And planning for more choice in our system creates more space for those who need to drive to do so by reducing some of the congestion on our streets. If people have safe, reliable options to suit different trip needs, vehicle miles traveled or VMT should go down. So we believe that aligning with the city's climate goals for reducing VMT should be, in fact, part of our safety commitments. When you reduce how much people need to drive by providing safe, reliable, and comfortable choices, we make our streets safer, but also our air cleaner and our cities more livable. here are some of the tools we have to support travel choices in our city we do lots of muni forward projects to help make muni faster but perhaps more importantly reliable we also did build bike infrastructure and this last year we adopted the biking and rolling plan which set the north star goal for how we will improve connectivity across the bike network The impact of connectivity and gap closures cannot be minimized to just mere mileage of bike lanes. We've recently closed gaps from Golden Gate to Sunset Dunes to Sloat and beyond to Lake Merced, so we've done kind of lots of projects to make that connection. And in fact, very recently, you also approved the Winston project that's going to close that gap from Lake Merced onto Winston towards State and beyond to some other projects we've built, like Frito-Calo. To support people biking, we're also working with Lyft to install bike share stations. And by the way, did you know that last year we carried close to 4 million people on bike share? If we think about all of the Bay Area transit systems, bike share would come in seventh. So it's pretty good. And we have urban HOV lanes on Lombard and Park Presidio as a pilot. It's the first HOV lanes in the state of California, helping to get more capacity out of our existing roadways. Here's our suggested draft work plan. It includes additional miles of Muni Forward projects, additional miles of protected bike lanes, and upgrading existing bikeways where we installed quick builds. Because remember, quick builds are just that. There was soft hit posts, and sometimes we need to move on from soft hit posts and actually put some concrete down. So our technical term is hardening our existing quick build projects. And we also are proposing additional bike share stations and moving our urban HOV lanes into permanent status. One way we can track improved transportation choices is by how people are taking advantage of the flexible travel options, such as bike share. Here we're tracking the number of bike share stations on the top that we've installed, and then below we're tracking the outcomes, which is the ridership that we're seeing on our system over multiple years. What I just presented was, again, a fiscally responsible draft for the 18-month work plan, and it will be updated when the new high-entry network is released. And now, finally, I want to share a little bit with you about some of the constraints that we have to work through to deliver these projects. What you see on the slide are practical considerations that affect how, when, and where we deliver this work. Practical constraints, of course, include resources, for example, funding and staffing capacity. We have a smaller pool of capital funding and increasing capital costs, frankly. Ever since the pandemic, they've been growing quite a bit. We have to ruthlessly prioritize on how to deliver the most effective changes with the funds and grants that we have. We also need to think about community readiness and political alignment. So delivering projects relies heavily, heavily, heavily on community input. Also political leadership plays a big role in guiding constituents and aligning city values. And we also work closely with advocates, community groups, with all of you, our board. And then we need strong partnership from the state and the federal government that I've talked about before. And third is, of course, the technical feasibility of projects. We have to consider street widths. We have to figure out if this is a transit route, emergency route, and making sure that everybody can move around. So in practice, what all this means, I know there's a lot of considerations on the slide, but in practice what it means is we have to be moving at the pace of different communities when possible. Two, focus on our limited funding and staffing where it most matters, target our resources. And three, work with the technical and legal limitations that we face. I want to close by returning to the actions before the board today. We are ready and excited to step into the next chapter of street safety. What we're asking you to vote on today is grounded in what we have learned through community outreach, aligned with state and national direction. It's action-oriented with clear deliverables laid out for us by the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Lurie, and our own work program. It reflects the recommendations of the Vision Zero Committee. and it is supported by renewed citywide collaboration. It's incredible. I've worked here for a long time, but to see all of us moving in the same direction, this is a first for me. So I'm personally very excited. I believe these actions will help address the public health crisis caused by the fatalities and traffic injuries and the wide-ranging impacts it has on people in our city. And I believe these actions support our goals to be transit first, to be multimodal, and to have safety for everybody, no matter what mode they choose to travel in our city. I want to thank everyone who has partnered with us to get here today. It's been a long time coming. And I would be absolutely remiss not to acknowledge many of my colleagues behind me, and in particular, Shannon Haake, Christy Osorio here, Vicente Romero, Ricardo Lea, and Rebecca Ashton-Seedson. With that, thank you for bearing with me while I laid out the last 10 years and what's coming in the next year and a half. We're available for questions.

Before we move on, I do want to announce we do have an overflow room available for members of the public who are standing in the aisleways here. Room 408, which is just down the hall, is live streaming this hearing. We cannot have, unfortunately, anyone standing in the aisles for fire safety. So if you're standing right now in the aisles, if you could please try to find a seat in this audience area, we'd appreciate it, or move to room 408. Thank you. Again, that's room 408. That's our overflow room for today's hearing. Chair, if we could just give everyone a moment to either move to the overflow room or clear out, I would appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you, everyone, for your patience as we made some rearrangements, and thank you for being here today. Before we move to public comment for Director Wise's presentation, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Vision Zero Committee THAT MET THREE TIMES THIS FALL AND WINTER TO HELP STAFF PREPARE FOR TODAY'S ITEM. AND THOSE FOLKS ARE DIRECTORS HINSEY, KAHINA, AND CHEN. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR GIVING ADDITIONAL TIME. Really, it's very much appreciated. And I believe that we have been presented with a more fulsome initiative than we would have had had we not engaged in that additional work. In particular, Chair Hinze, I wonder if you would take a moment or two to just talk about the work of the committee and let us know what you think it's important for us to be keeping in mind as we deliberate this action.

Sure, and thank you for those kind words. I, in turn, would like to thank also my fellow directors and committee members for donating one of their time, but as well as our staff. I know that preparing for these meetings isn't easy, and we made you prepare for three additional ones, so thank you for that. I will sort of recap thematically what we did in really two of our three meetings, and then the third was really just to refine what you see before you today. We sort of rekindled, repurposed the Vision JOSEPH Committee this fall and winter, as Chair Tarloff has referenced, with the goal of supporting staff and bringing this item before you. What we did really at our first meeting was As we know, our work here is grounded in what we hear from the public. So our first meeting was kind of a recap of the first 10 years. as Director Wise recapped for you in the first part of her presentation. And then we really heard from what staff's engagement with the public and what outcomes that that was. And particularly we heard speeding as kind of the main worry that always rises to the top in safety work so that was not surprising and sort of confirmed to us that the tools that we use need to really help us address speeding as the number one cause as well as encouraging boats. So after that, at the conclusion of that meeting, we really wanted a sort of overview of the current tools that we use as an agency. So in our second meeting, staff walked us through that. And we really asked questions about, you know, of those tools in the toolbox, what tools work and are most effective in in crash prevention and fatality prevention. And I know this was a particular passion of Vice Chair Kikita's when we started this committee. So we learned that, for example, daylighting was very effective and also fairly cheap in reducing crashes, so just an example like that. And we were presented with the drafts, with the draft of the proposals commitments you see today, and we wordsmithed some of those, particularly wanting to have wanting to make sure that we had one that was robust in conveying that we as an agency want the public to have multiple options in how we get around, and we want to make sure that whatever option you choose, whether that be walk, drive, bike, take public transit, et cetera, we want to make sure that we know that that's safe. So we tried to do some wordsmithing around that. I'll close my – well, one other point, then I'll close. During this process, both the Street Safety Act via the Board of Supervisors, Supervisor Melgar, and the Street Safety Initiative, the executive order for the mayor, both of those came to be during the course of our work as a committee. And so we were very fortunate and pleased to see those. And we looked at specifically how our work, both the Speed Safety Act and initiatives call out multiple departments, but we wanted to see specifically how MTA's work was called out in those and how we can remain accountable to those. So like, for example, I know that daylight hardening was called out in the Street Safety Act and also in the Street Safety Initiative. And so that's kind of an example of one of the things of how MTA is responding to to both things that were called out in both of those initiatives. At our last meeting, the commitments that you see today were endorsed by the committee, and we are always interested in your thoughts. We are eager to hear your thoughts. and revisions that you have of what is before you today, we're also eager to hear again from the public. And yeah, we are interested in whether it is at the full board or a committee looking at both the Commitment and the Street Safety Act initiative. following those through and so having some sort of arena to hold us as the MTA accountable for that, whether that be here at the full board or at a subcommittee that is to be determined. But for today, we look forward to hearing your feedback on any of the commitments and street safety initiative work. And that is all I have.

Thank you, Committee Chair Hinze. We will now open public comment on this item for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There will be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. I do have a few speaker cards. Joel Kamischer, David Dolphin, Brooke Kunn, Susan George, and Claire Amable.

Hello. I hope the Mayor's Safety Initiative is a great success. We hope the union can be a partner in achieving this. Since this is the mayor's initiative, we hope the city will provide more funding to MTA to keep this keep funding the employees with no staff reduction or reduced hours. Specific to the crossing guards, we would like to see increased traffic division motorcycle officers to crack down on the speeders, red light runners, and drivers making illegal turns. and failing to yield to passengers getting off the LRVs. This provides safety both for the crossing guards and all of the pedestrians. We would also like to see more PCOs preventing drivers from blocking the crosswalks when the light changes, because that forces pedestrians to walk out and into oncoming traffic, and that's a definite hazard. I've made many appeals to different people, and they've ignored me. And so Julie, I hope you and Victoria have more clout than I do. And you could perhaps persuade the police to do this. I know it's tough to ask for increased hours when we have a huge budget deficit. Back in 2017, there was a big increase in pedestrian deaths, and we proposed giving some crossing guards an additional hour and a half between their school shifts to go out to areas where there's a lot of pedestrian traffic going to shopping centers and other places, and unfortunately that was denied. Again, I know we have a big budget deficit. I hope you would consider possibly doing that, giving more hours. Yes, it's expensive, but preventing accidents, saving lives, for any lawsuits is a worthy investment, and I hope you would give some serious consideration to that. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. My name is David Dolphin. I'm a data engineer, a software engineer, and a mechanical engineer. I'm here with a simple standard. When we change a street, the improvements must show up in the data, not just in completed items, but in measured speeds. Because the goal here isn't just activity or busy work. The goal is fewer crashes, fewer injuries, and zero fatalities. On Clarendon Avenue, part of the High Injury Network, SFMTA is doing planning and design work for the Clarendon quick build. I ran radar speed studies June 2nd to 4th, 2025, and again January 15th through 19th, 26, after Public Works repaved the road. The quick build's goal is to slow traffic, but speeds have increased. After 6,000 transits, the numbers are in. Median speeds are up 8% to 33 miles an hour. P85 percentile speeds are up 5% to 39 miles an hour. Max speed has increased from 53 to 54 miles an hour. This is a 25 mile an hour school zone. All these speeds were taken in front of Clarendon Elementary. The policy ask here is simple. For each of the 86 projects, commit to publishing a before and after speed scoreboard, commit to continue iterating until speeds go down. It's quite easy to validate these. A municipal grade radar sensor can be purchased for about $300. Using free and open source software, such as the Velocity Report application I wrote, residents can directly measure speed accurately and repeatedly. If anyone wants to discuss this project, I'll be outside. I'll also be available at Belluna Cafe on Oak and Broderick next Monday, the 26th, from 1 to 2 PM. Please set the expectation today. Deliver projects, measure outcomes, keep going until speeds and fatalities go down. If the speeds don't drop, the work can't stop. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Chair Tarlow and directors. My name is Brooke Hewn, and I live in the inner Richmond. And I've got two children under the age of 10. We walk, bicycle, and take public transit all over the city. And I'm here today to urge you to adopt a work plan that commits to more solutions at the scale needed to make our streets safe. We need the work plan to do the following. One, commit to complete five to six quick build projects within 18 months, not just approve them. We need to prioritize our most deadly streets, like Goff, Franklin, Harrison, 9th, 10th, and Bryant. Two, continue daylighting intersections so San Francisco achieves major safety milestones soon, plus commit to hardened daylighting on high-injury streets. Three, have outcomes-based metrics that show more than numbers completed. Four, reform the residential traffic calming program so speed bumps, tables, and cushions are installed proactively and equitably. Five, ensure that dangerous intersections on the long-awaited new high injury network get more than basic safety upgrades. Low-cost turn calming and pedestrian safety zones should be on the list of standard safety. treatments for all high injury network intersections. Now is the time for the SFMTA to adopt an ambitious work plan because the new street safety initiative and act make clear that city agencies must do everything in their power now to end severe and fatal crashes. Thank you for your leadership and service and for ensuring the new work plan delivers safe streets.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Trying to decide if I need my readers. Good afternoon, Chair Tarloff and directors. My name is Susan George. I live in District 9. In 2025, 75% of the pedestrians killed in San Francisco were seniors. I'm a senior and a physician. This difficult statistic has motivated me to speak today. I live right off of Courtland and Bernal Heights, which is a high-injury street. In the last year, some needed improvements have been made on Courtland. Soft hit posts and red paint have made it more difficult for cars to park up against the intersection. This daylighting saves lives. More work needs to be done. It is essential that you continue daylighting intersections. We need this to be in effect citywide, and we need hardened daylighting on high-injury corridors. The red paint is a good start. Soft hip posts are even better. And for the most dangerous intersections, more permanent forms of preventing motorists from parking are needed. These measures are a relatively inexpensive way to make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Please adopt a work plan that allows us to achieve an even lower pedestrian death rate for 2026. Thank you for your leadership, and I look forward to a new work plan that delivers safe streets all over San Francisco.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, chair and directors. My name is Paul. I live, work, and bike in Noe Valley, right at the border between Districts 8 and 9. Five years ago, a close colleague and friend of mine, 29 years old, that had just moved to the Bay Area, was killed in a hit and run a block away from me at Polk and Hayes. The driver was running 50 miles per hour in the unprotected bike lane. I'm here today to urge you to adopt a work plan that commits to more solution at the scale and speed needed to make our streets safe. In particular, I urge this board to, we need the work plan to ensure that dangerous intersections are prioritized with physical improvements that can provenly increase the safety of pedestrians. I also urge this board to approve solutions that prioritize speed. As the tragic death of my colleague has proven, speed matters in all sense of the word. An improvement that is on today is something that is going to save lives. It only takes seconds to take one, and speed matters for those implementations. I think now is the time for the SFMTA to adopt an ambitious work plan because when things are done well and according to data, it is working, but a lot more is needed given the scale of the problem. Thank you for your leadership and for ensuring the new work plan delivers safe streets.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. I'm Lisa, a D2 resident, crash victim, and grateful beneficiary of things like protected multimodal lanes and daylighting. I'm here today to ask you to support the Street Safety Initiative, putting the well-being of our most vulnerable individuals, pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders at the forefront of our streets policy. You've done a lot since the 2014 bike crash that smashed my face and to reduce my hundreds of near misses crossing Franklin, which is my daily route to the 49. Running home from Clay Slow Street, weaving through Pacific Heights, is still terrifying, as few intersections have daylighting, and cars gun it up those hills past the stop signs to be able to see if cars are coming the other direction. Unfortunately, I'm usually the thing in the way. Where daylighting exists on that route, I feel like I have a fighting chance of getting home. So I encourage you to support this initiative and also to continue to act on street safety projects that are proven to work. Put in hardened daylighting with things like scooter parking, which would be a massive win to get scooters off sidewalks, and keep cars from parking in red zones. Increase the number of upcoming protected lanes from just three miles to something much greater. Studies show that protected lanes are one of the best ways to get the scooters off the sidewalks. People will be upset about losing a bit of parking, but it's better than losing another person to a traffic death. Continue quick builds that allow me to safely navigate Franklin and Gough so I can catch the bus here in one piece, and implement projects like the approved transit-only lanes on Ocean Avenue that will provide street calming. We don't need to relitigate what we know is right. We deserve action without delay because the clock until the next pedestrian death is always ticking. It might be me. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Board of Directors. Claire Amable, Director of Advocacy for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. The data in this report is compelling and shows us the improvements the agency has employed over the last 10 years of leading the Vision Zero strategy has improved safety significantly for people who bike and roll and walk in our city. Most compelling to us is bike share ridership being the highest it's ever been, and we know that a quarter of San Franciscans bike at least once a week. That is an incredible statistic considering there are only 51 miles of protected bike lanes in our city compared to the thousands of miles in driving lanes. Our elected officials made big commitments to improving street safety through the Street Safety Initiative and the Street Safety Act. Rather than riding this wave and setting ambitious goals, we are concerned the action items in this proposal will not actually achieve the commitments you are being asked to adopt. How will we reduce VMT and protect our most vulnerable road users if we can only expect to build three miles of protected bike lanes and upgrade three slow streets in the next 18 months? The biking and rolling plan is the culmination of three years' worth of community engagement, street design research, and best practice commitments. It is not addressed in the Street Safety Initiative until after one year. What the BRP was approved last year, you all asked staff to come back in nine months with a strategy to roll out slow school zones, and we haven't heard anything about that yet. We know that interagency coordination takes time, but we don't need to shelve all of the plans the agency has spent years creating just to start at ground zero. We have the tools and political support to put things in the ground sooner than 18 months, and we encourage you to adopt a more ambitious work plan once the 2025 high injury map is published. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, I'm Glynis Fowler. I live in Mission Bay, and I love looking out my window, looking at this beautiful city. But ever since I looked out at the wrong time and saw a small child in a stroller end up in a muni pole, It's not quite the same walking through the streets of San Francisco. And I'm not the only one who had the unfortunate circumstances to have been looking out my window that day. There's other residents of my building that are also still dealing with the trauma of this. What's a slower timeline when it comes to street safety? It literally means more people that have a chance to get killed at the same spots that I've watched others die. We don't have the luxury of time when it comes to predicting traffic accidents when we have a beautiful presentation that shows exactly that we know where they're most likely going to happen. This timeline needs to be expeditious, and the funding around it needs to be prepared to support everybody. It doesn't just change your looking at the way you walk through the streets. We don't frequent the stores on the other side of King Street the same way we do the ones down towards 4th. This impacts business owners. This impacts people who visit our city. This impacts in so many deeper ways. And the loss of tax revenue from us no longer being as participatory within our city as we once were every time we order Amazon, it hurts. It hurts in such nickel and diming ways, and it's so crucial that we support this happening at an expeditious pace.

Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.

My name is Regina Islas. I live in D1. I am a senior. First, I'd like to thank every single speaker who has spoken before me. RIGHT ON. THANK YOU, DITTO AND AMAZON. I ALSO WANT TO EXPRESS RESPECT TO THE MEMBERS OF LOCAL 1414 AND I BELIEVE IT WAS 1409 THAT WERE IN THE ROOM PREVIOUSLY. EVERY SINGLE DAY DRIVERS, MUNI WORKERS ARE WORKING TO KEEP EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US SAFE AND I DON'T THINK THAT GETS ACKNOWLEDGED ENOUGH SO I WANT TO BE SURE TO SAY THAT TODAY. I don't have a car that is intentional. I ride Muni. I do not use Uber, Waymo, and all that other nonsense because Muni is the way we get around. I walk. I would love to see a biking program connected to Muni. Maybe that will happen. And I would also like to issue a brief reminder that it's lovely to hear percentage points that show, oh, there's been a drop in fatalities and accidents. Those are important, but those percentages represent real human beings. So please say real numbers. X amount of people didn't die. X amount of people were benefited. I don't want to hear percentages. That's just a blank. As a senior, I am concerned about walking safety. I walk all over the place. I take it as my right and privilege as a native San Franciscan. And we've got to get scooters off the streets, whether they're in bike lanes or not. And there has to be consequences other than people being hurt. So thank you. Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good afternoon, board members. My name is Carol Brownson. I live in District 2. And I'm very pleased to see this report. There's not a great deal I can add. I'd like to say I was adding a few comments about paint from a bird's eye view. But no, I'm adding it from a disability scooter rider's eye view. And that red paint, you know the red paint in the octagon-shaped thing at street corners? Most of it says S-T-O-P. But there are a lot of people driving cars that don't understand what that means. And now, in addition to that red paint, we have red paint at the daylighting zones. And I love the daylighting zones. What a difference it makes for me from this level, trying to see out into the street and hoping that the driver coming towards me can see me. The one at California and Webster, fantastic. It's kind of protected by some driveways, so it was a good, clear space. And the difference that makes in crossing that dangerous section of California Street is remarkable. A few blocks down at Washington, there used to be a bus stop there, a flag stop. They took it out, but they put the red paint in. And that really helps, too, because I've had a lot of difficulty getting along that street to get to the 24. Well, now there's at least a few drivers that know what the red paint means. It means there's a reserved parking place for them. And in particular now, there is a large black SUV that likes to park there. And boy, do I have to peer around here. It's safe. No, it's not. So we need a little more than just red paint, please. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

I have two minutes, right? All right. I won't talk so fast this time. All right. I want to speak about the real tension that we feel for the have the buses move faster. At the last meeting, that was one of the topics that was brought up was increasing the average speed. And the streets should be safer today. Often by reducing speeds, this prevents collisions, right? It's not an either or choice, but we have to be clear about what we mean by faster. We're talking about average bus speed, not higher top speeds. With bus physics, physics matters. The bus is not a sedan. It's a large, heavy-duty vehicle carrying passengers. And as its speed increases, momentum increases. The bus carries much more kinetic energy than a normal car. Even with strong brakes and stopping powers limited by traction, road conditions, and other realities, heavy-duty vehicles need more stopping distance. to stop fully. Higher speeds means longer stopping distance. And if there's a collision or energy involved, far greater. Even without a crash, sudden braking can injure passengers with falls that we see every day. So how do these buses stop? They stop by SFMTA fleet mechanics at the trolley yards and the diesel yards. And I respectfully want to ask the board to pause any reductions that weaken front line maintenance, supervisory coverages, and require transparent justification for claims savings, for work changes, and direct to management to work collaboratively with their staff on solutions that protect public safety, service, and reliability of our fleet. Thank you. And I'll conclude with four questions. Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? And will it be beneficial to all concerned? Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Chair Tarlov and directors. My name is Alice Powell. I live at Octavia and Market on the Vision Zero High Injury Network. First off, I want to voice my support for all of the measures that were presented in the Vision Zero presentation we've seen here today. And I hope that the mayor's directive can guide the interdepartmental cooperation we need in order to have truly safer streets for all residents of San Francisco. Every day on my walk to and from work along Octavia Street, I have to contend with harried rush hour drivers who continue to treat Octavia and its feeder streets like Fell, Oak, and Haight as freeways and on-ramps rather than the residential streets that they are. Adjacent streets like Franklin and Gough, where I frequently go to work, dine, and shop, are also part of the high-injury network and feature numerous dangerous crossings where driver behaviors and intersection design drive frequent driver and non-driver conflicts. Measures have been taken at some intersections to physically separate car drivers from cyclists and pedestrians. Signal changes and concrete barriers at Oak at Octavia have eliminated car right turns into active crosswalks while pedestrians have the right of way. And the Page Slow Street provides another safe intersection where cyclists and pedestrians can cross Octavia without worrying about turning commuter vehicles cramming themselves into the crosswalks. Physical separation of car drivers and non-drivers should always be a priority for safety, something that the Safe System approach acknowledges in its discussion of reducing the potential harm caused by accidents and mistakes. While the Street Safety Act prioritizes the design of infrastructure, such as quick-build projects, I urge you to adopt a work plan that commits to not just designing, but also actually completing the construction of physical infrastructure updates in a timely manner that reflects how critical these improvements are for reducing pedestrian fatalities and injuries. Where these structural improvements have already been completed, they create a far greater sense of safety and walkability and dramatically reduce conflicts between drivers and non-drivers. But the scale of ongoing pedestrian fatalities and injuries demands that structural improvements continue to be implemented equitably and across the entire high injury network. It is not just their design that should be prioritized in the near future, but their construction and in numbers that will actually make a difference so that they can do the good work that they're meant to do. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

I LIVE IN THE BAY VIEW DISTRICT OF I LIVE IN THE BAY VIEW DISTRICT OF SAN FRANCISCO. SAN FRANCISCO. I OFTENTIMES TAKE MY BIKE AND I OFTENTIMES TAKE MY BIKE AND RIDE ALL KINDS OF TRANSITS. RIDE ALL KINDS OF TRANSITS. I ALSO HAVE A CAR SO I'VE TAKEN I ALSO HAVE A CAR SO I'VE TAKEN EVERY SINGLE DIFFERENT ROUTE EVERY SINGLE DIFFERENT ROUTE THROUGHOUT THE CITY. THROUGHOUT THE CITY. MY PRIMARY CONCERNS ARE MY PRIMARY CONCERNS ARE ENLIGHTENING OR GIVING ENLIGHTENING OR GIVING CONSIDERATION TO OUR LOWER CONSIDERATION TO OUR LOWER INCOME NEIGHBORHOODS SUCH AS ARE uh cons you know considerably being ignored those streets could use some repaving and brighter lights you know if we're talking about street safety i think our our city and especially our bus stops are very dark especially on some of our lower income neighborhoods and i think if we have brighter lights some of our residents and some of our people who are waiting for the bus don't have to kind of peek out into the street to look for or wait for their bus, which I think is a huge traffic hazard. I also want to advocate for some small business owners on Ocean Avenue. They're concerned with the red lanes as the cave does run through the center of Ocean Avenue. They're concerned that they will be losing their parking spots and not be able to have people coming into their business due to the construction.

uh so i wanted to bring that to light um that is all thank you thank you next speaker good afternoon board griffin lee here representing connected sf connected sf staff and our members across san francisco I appreciate the presentation, Victoria, and thanks, MTA, for putting time into this new initiative, so to speak. We feel certainly there is a little bit more balanced approach here. We certainly don't disagree with all that was presented, specifically point three in the street safety commitments, reducing vehicle miles traveled. The reality is the majority of San Franciscan residents still believe or still use their car as their main mode of transportation to get from point A to point B, whether that's the doctors taking their kid to school, on and on. We do appreciate the change in language around the efficiency of transportation modes. That feels more like an equitable strategy versus the reducing vehicle miles traveled, which feels like It's running a bit of an agenda here. We do empathize with all the victims who have been in traffic collisions and fatalities. We don't want to see any happen and take place in our city. The reality is it's not just about street design. I'll refer back to the... The working group that came out with the, I'm forgetting the name of the report, Division Zero report back in the spring, but the number one emphasis they made was to continue enforcement and leverage enforcement. So we appreciate that this approach does work with PD to start enforcing the law for all modes of transit on our streets. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Mike. I'm a resident of District 9. If it were up to me, I would begin and end every discussion on this topic with one statistic, which is that there are more than 350 people killed on city streets since 2014. We are not doing enough. Last year's drop is not a trend. There was a very similar drop two years ago when fatalities dropped from 39 to 26, and I think you all know that. We haven't seen a similar drop in crashes or injuries. The changes in fatalities are just noise. It's a good thing to reduce injuries 25% or 35%, but we will never eliminate injuries and fatalities unless we are willing to do more than plastic poles and green paint. What frustrates me most is the lack of urgency from this city to make us better. SFMTA loves to talk about how many meetings are held, how much community outreach is being done, the committees and the plans, and on and on and on. Director, you mentioned left turns, which are one of the most dangerous driver actions. But last year, this agency brought left turns back to Valencia Street. And if I remember correctly, all of the directors here voted for it. The streets are not going to get safer on their own. The agency has to grow a spine and stand up for street safety, even when there's pushback from members of the community, and especially when that pushback is based on falsehoods. Streets that are safer for vulnerable road users are safer for everyone. I'm here today because I ride a bike every day in this city, and I know that if we don't do more to make the streets safe, one day it will be my brain splattered on the pavement. And then, in all likelihood, this agency will do almost nothing in response. I feel this problem constantly, every time I dodge a right hook or an opening door, and every time I have to move into the car lane because someone parked in the bike lane. We have all the tools we need to fix this problem, and we've had all the data we need for like 10 years. We're still short on resources, on imagination, and on political will. If the city is serious about traffic safety, we have to do much, much more than these plans call for.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, my name is Stan Glantz. I'm a retired professor from UCSF, and I live in District 4. I just wanted to reinforce what several other people had said, that the plan is excellent, but you need some deadlines and a specific schedule for implementing the high priority changes so that the public will be able to determine how effectively you're moving forward. I was really troubled to hear about the delays in implementing the biking plan or the rolling plan, since I both ride a bike and walk, as well as drive around the city. So I think making some commitments to some specific projects that will be done by specific times is very important. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. My name is Paul Wormer. I'm another one of these whiny District 2 people who's concerned about traffic on the residential streets in D2. And there are a lot of things, I think, that are not necessarily being looked at in quite as much detail to incentivize or to understand the problem, I guess I should phrase.

And I'll just, if I can show that screen.

great info on traffic speed reduction. But if you look at it, you see that on some streets, you've reduced it to about a tenth of what it was. And in other streets, you're not even to half of what it was. So that improvement is by no means everywhere. There is nothing about what's happened on speeds or driver behaviors on neighboring streets. How are the drivers on the non-high injury street treating stop signs if they're not speeding along Fulton? Has that been looked at? Do you have any way of understanding that? As a pedestrian, I'm scared to ride a bike on city streets, to be honest. And I gave up my car because Muni's drivers, operators are phenomenal in getting me where I want to go. I see the slow speed high risks every day that I go walking. Cars doing right turns on red. They talk about, oh, you're not looking back there for the pedestrian when you're turning left. Well, when the car's going right on red, do you know where he's looking? He's looking left to make sure there's no traffic coming. And as a pedestrian who's walking with the light or entering a four-way stop, you don't get seen. I've become very, very cautious, which is why I wasn't hit by the city car about three weeks ago, which is why I'm not regularly hit when I'm walking by drivers who are cruising through because they've looked over to the left and they don't see any traffic coming. How are you capturing those sorts of incidents? Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon. My name is Jaime Villoria. I am a Tenderloin resident and Outreach and Organizing Manager for San Francisco Transit Riders. I support the Street Safety Initiative, and I'm appreciative of the mayor, our supervisors, directors, and everyone involved in this initiative. As SS of Transit Rider, I think a lot of these issues can be addressed by shifting away from reliance on cars and into transit. We can do that by ensuring transit has improved quality of service by investments on making it reliable and cleaner, making it more affordable in cars, and ensuring they are very accessible. We have to make it that people want to take transit. I know funding is a problem, but if there's a commitment and political will, we can find that money. In terms of street safety infrastructure investments, ensure to be clear to staff on outreach guidelines so they know how much outreach is enough so the board are able to decide and staff are able to stick with that decision once a project is already approved and ongoing. We cannot needlessly delay projects while people are in danger. We also cannot rely always on police enforcement. It has to be a holistic approach. Ensure that community members are clear about what is being proposed and understand that in order to have better and safer streets, especially if it inconveniences drivers. Finally, this is from my experience, let's establish neighborhood working groups or task forces, especially in equity priority areas to ensure community members have a venue where these initiatives are discussed, have community buy-in and community oversight. A good model to follow was a successful Tenderloin Safety Traffic Safety Task Force. That resulted in transit lanes, pedestrian scrambles, quick builds, the Golden Gate Greenway, and reduced car speeds in the Tenderloin neighborhood. And I can tell you for sure that that was something that reduced fatalities in the neighborhood and, again, provided buy-in from the community. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker.

I'm Harold from Nob Hill. Traffic-related injuries and fatalities can be prevented. There's a straightforward way for you to do it. Put an end to the damage put in place last century. Stop devoting yourself to preserving car use. Plenty of people out there, they shouldn't be in constant danger. Get rid of driving cars and parking, driving lanes and parking. We all know more efficient and safer uses of public space. Focus on lanes for buses and lanes for bicycles. Current massive amounts of streets devoted to private car storage should be replaced. with more useful things. Make sidewalks safe. Enforce the daylighting law. Relying on red paint and $0 fines is literally worthless. Have your parking control officers enforce parking violations. Actively issue citations with fines that actually cost the violators and get them to stop. Shouldn't be cars all over sidewalks and bus lanes, bike lanes, and crosswalks. So much more you could be doing. The people here will support you. Groups throughout the city will support you. My District 3 supervisor, Danny, Supervisor Myrna Melgar, Supervisor Balaamu, they'll support you. We need you to make the city better and safer. Take us into a brighter future. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, Chair Tarloff and directors. My name is Jody Medeiros, and I'm the executive director of Walk San Francisco. We are the nonprofit that works on behalf of all pedestrians so that we are truly safe getting around San Francisco. I want to thank all the speakers today who came and spent their afternoon with you. And I also do want to thank the Vision Zero Committee, the directors, Hinzi, Kahina, and Chen, for your work that has led up to today's vote and today's hearing. Because as a committee, you've asked the tough questions that have led to stronger commitments and more transparency and focused on the most effective and equitable solutions. And this is exactly what we're asking from the entire board today. Because we need to ensure that the next 18 months of the SFMTA's result in meaningful progress for safe streets. As Director Wise said, we could be at a turning point in finally seeing a drop in severe and fatal crashes. The SFMTA's first decade of Vision Zero is making a difference from speed cameras and speed humps to quick build projects and daylighting. But you all know that so much more needs to be done. Every day, we face bigger, heavier, and more powerful vehicles that pose a greater threat, especially to those outside of the vehicle. Three-quarters of pedestrians killed last year were seniors, which is a heartbreaking indicator. Solutions still aren't at the scale needed to keep everyone safe, and the proposed work plan needs to be stronger to get San Francisco closer to this. We need more QuickBooks projects on the ground in the next 18 months, not just approved. We need a universal daylighting plan and a plan for hardening daylighting on the high-injury network. We also are asking for meaningful metrics and complete reform of the residential traffic calming program. We do understand that the SFMTA faces funding constraints, and the delay in the Department of Public Health release of the 2025 High Injury Network Map is challenging for the agency. But I believe the SFMTA can do more under your leadership, and it must. Please ask for, one, stronger commitments in the work plan, and two, the staff to bring the work plan back to this board after the High Injury Network Map is released. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, board of directors. Thank you so much. I'm Praveen. I'm founder and CEO of Mobility Division, which is based out in San Francisco. I live and work in D3. So my quick question to Victoria, when we presented the slides, we've been covering a lot of aspects of road safety, like social impact, psychological or economical impact, public health. But we are not talking about the technological impact. exactly what's happening in San Francisco, right? We do have autonomous vehicle. What we learned from cruise impact to Waymo's impact, recently with the power outages and how that being disrupted our network. And what is the outcome for that one? Because the entire nation is looking forward to the safety impact of Vision Zero by including the AVs into the picture. Because when we talk about all those transit mode or mobility mode, we've been talking about the way... pedestrians to the high dimension vehicles like trucks, but we included the mobility modes, micro mobility, and the other side is the AVs. So how are we gonna incorporate that one into the picture Because micromobility, I've been seeing like all this micromobility, they are going at a higher speed, more than 50 miles per hour speed on a sidewalk, which is good enough for a elderly person to be injured or to a fat adult. I've seen like every day, my day starts near the ferry building, where we all are walking or jogging, this micromobility, they are like... Going at a higher speed? Oh, my God. Thank you. So that is a cute thought, especially and also with the AVs. Because recently with the power outages, we saw that one. And also during that new year, when I was looking at my balcony, I saw that how the AV being impacted were trying to get into the blocked street and blocking the other vehicles, and which leads to safety. So how are we going to address those two issues, especially into the technology aspects into the new Vision Zero and what we learned from the last one decade of Vision Zero initiatives? Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers in the room to provide public comment for this item?

Hello. My name is Malay Maloa. I came earlier with the local 1414 members and we were coming to speak on something different. I'm glad I stayed for the whole presentation. We were here to bring to light coverage cuts to bus maintenance that were being handed down by Muni management. only to hear that we're a huge part of what San Francisco needs. We're hearing all of the safety, the street safety initiatives. We're already in two parts of the five pieces of the pie, and we could very easily be in three and four of them. I'm hearing a lot of reduction of miles traveled by autos, rideshares, e-bikes, e-scooters, autonomous vehicles by Amazon. I mean, we can prevent a lot of that with maintenance and by vehicles. I mean, with buses and public transportation being provided to the city. I mean, you guys are helping us out a lot by providing a lot of the daylighting and reddening a lot of the curbs. They're making things a lot more visible for us out there, too. I mean, I hear a lot of transit first. I hear a lot of transit walk and biking. And then all of the vehicle mileages go down. I mean, we're trying to keep the cars out, and we're trying to prevent them from going in certain areas. I mean, no better way to do it than with the buses. And we are the backbone of the city. When things go down, we are providing buses to everywhere and to provide people service to every part of the city. I mean, we're doing our part. And we were just trying to bring that to light that we are being looked at for cuts in bus maintenance. And that's ultimately going to roll out into our safety, our street safety initiatives that we're trying to roll out. So I hope that you guys do take that into a little bit of consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers for this item? I'm seeing none in the room, and I have no accommodation requests.

Thank you. We will close public comment. Directors, I would like to invite the other members of our Vision Zero committee, if they are ready, if they would like to go first to talk about how this has come to completion, how you're feeling about it as we deliberate. Again, I really want to thank you for taking the additional time on behalf of the full board to really dive into this with three additional meetings. So Vice Chair Kahina, would you like to start?

There we go. I'm happy to kick us off. I think two important folks that I also want to acknowledge that were part of a lot of our discussions were Captain O'Keefe and Commander Martin. The Vision Zero subcommittee really acted as a smaller space to really operationalize this collaboration that now Mayor Lurie has codified together with Supervisor Melgar. into legislation to broaden that coalition and this deeper effort to work across different departments to highlight these issues, but also the solutions that have to come with those issues. I would say that when we initially had our meetings, we were working In this moment of realizing that the previous year had a significant number of fatalities, we wanted to enact solutions. We wanted to see what best practices were. We wanted to see how to scale those best practices, understanding the limited constraints that we have as an agency. And especially now that we're in the precipice of our budget season, it was so important for us to, at least a subset of the board, to really take a deep dive on what those solutions can be and how to scale those. Of course, I so appreciate Victoria closing us off with a slide on the constraints. Because ultimately, those were the things that we were really grappling with by that last meeting. We wanted more, of course. We wanted more. secure bike lanes. We wanted more of all the different elements that we see have worked and that staff have told us have worked in the ability to enforce speed reductions and reduce speeds and behavior. And this is where we landed, just based on all those different discussions. We, of course, always want to do more. The other contributing factor that we're still waiting for is the new high injury network map. It's challenging to work on these policies not having that information, because so much of understanding, did we actually make a dent in this, is really understanding how that map has changed, if at all, and if it has, by how much. So in some sense, there was a little bit of slight frustration that we were deciding these things at a moment where that wasn't yet published. And so I know staff is going to speak to that once we do a little bit of a Q&A. But again, this is where we landed with the information that we had, with the knowledge that we were able to ascertain in those three meetings. also understanding the context in which we're working with. So we want to do more. I think that's the takeaway, but it just feels like this is the best that we can do in this moment.

Thank you, Vice Chair Kahina. Director Chen, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot.

Thank you, Chair. I'd like to thank my colleagues, Director Hinze, for chairing the Vision Zero Committee and also Vice Chair Kahina for being there as well. We had, it was a lot of conversation with staff. I'd also agree with Vice Chair Kahina to thank Captain O'Keefe with SFFD, with the Fire Department, and Captain and Commander Martin with the Police Department on what is going to be an interagency thing We have seen support from the Board of Supervisors. We have seen support from the Mayor. And I'd like to make sure that we at the SFMTA are also doing our part to really address this, to really address what is a public health crisis and something that is something that is within our power to help with. You know, with going back and forth with staff over the past fall, some things I've appreciated working with staff are making sure that we really connect with the public about the why in the background, because this is something that I think staff live and breathe every day, but we often need to remind, but for folks who don't, always think about these things. We need to remind folks. And for me, what's very personal for me is that where I used to live in 2020, there was a traffic fatality of someone who was crossing the street at Goff and Geary in 2020. And that was an intersection that I would cross almost every day. Other people here have talked about the tragic death of a four-year-old who was in a stroller crossing 4th and King. There was a fatality last year of a senior on Geary and around 33rd Avenue. These are real people, real lives that we're talking about. And I believe with the systems, with the work that we can do, with the safe systems approach and with the policy alignments, we can work on bringing those numbers down and saving lives. I also appreciate what staff talking about, making sure that we are grounding our approaches with data and making sure that we can show to the public that our approaches around left turn treatments, around traffic calming are producing results and making sure that we are attaining safer speeds and safer behaviors. I appreciate that with staff and with the presentation, we are talking realistically about our constraints. We do not want to over-promise and under-deliver. We want to be realistic about funding constraints. We want to be realistic about community constraints. We want to be realistic about making sure that we go where people do want our treatments, and those things being a real consideration. I also want to thank staff because we do want to make sure that this is something that benefits everybody in San Francisco, no matter how you get around. If you're walking, if you're driving, if you're biking, if you're rolling, if you are a kid in a stroller, that that dangerous driving behavior, dangerous behavior on the streets is something that affects everybody. And so making sure that we protect folks from unsafe and fast left turns, that we protect people from excessive speeds, red light running, some of the stuff that we know, failure to yield, stuff that we know that is the major cause of accidents and deaths here. I know that there's also been some conversations here about the work plan. That is still, we are here today to talk about the policies and making sure that we adopt the, I'm sorry, I have to look at this slide again. that we adopt the safe systems approach, that we adopt the four principles in our street safety commitments, and that we work with and that we follow through on the mayor's executive order to make sure that we collaborate with our agencies and city partners around reducing traffic deaths. And so I think that there will be future conversations around exactly what our action plan will be. We are still waiting for this new high injury network, which I think has not been updated in four years. And we really hope that we're going to see results that the places where we have done our treatments on the high injury network have made those places safer. And then that means that there will be new places. The High Injury Network will likely shift and we'll see other places that are now the top hotspots that the MTA should go address. So those are the things that we are here today to hopefully pass a good policy. And then as we get more information, as we get the High Injury Network, as we understand a little bit more about our budget, for example, we will be able to provide more clarity to the public about what our execution will be. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Director Chen. I'd like to open it up now to the other directors and the whole board to ask clarifying questions or provide commentary for staff before we move forward on this item. Director Hemminger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The testimony we've received today is compelling and in some cases heartbreaking. I do appreciate the plan that our colleagues brought before us and I intend to vote for it. But I think they would be the first to acknowledge that we've got a lot of work ahead of us. And I wanted to ask a couple of questions just to make sure I'm getting a good beat on what you are presenting us. The reference to the press accounts of a big drop in fatalities in the last year, do we have any sense of what's causing that?

Thank you for that question. It's difficult to say, and I really can't attribute that particular statistic to any one measure that we've done, much as I'd like to say it's the speed cameras or something like that. Because if you look at the data on one of the slides where we take fatalities, you know, and measure them from year to year, they do fluctuate. And at the end of the day, we are staying at an average of, you know, about one to two, two and a half a month. So, yes, we're celebrating the drop, and I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a trend. But I couldn't really tell you. It's because we did any one thing.

Well, you brought up the cameras. And for quite a long time, our former director, Mr. Tumblin, was hailing that as the silver bullet. And we got a very limited deployment. But again, according to press accounts, it was a pretty big mover and shaker in terms of the results. I felt somewhat odd in getting through this whole presentation today and not talking about the cameras that I heard. It seems like we talked about everything else. So when are we going to get our mitts on the cameras and be able to understand what those results are and how we can spread the deployment more broadly in our city after we go get permission to do so?

Thank you for that question. And I didn't focus on the cameras today because we've talked about it a lot in prior meetings and will continue to do so. And I sure do hope it's the silver bullet, but we're at the very beginning stages of our pilot. And so we need a little bit more time to see if, in fact, the cameras are the silver bullet and that we see that trend downward sustained over time. Looking forward, we are allowed to move the cameras to different locations after 18 months of first piloting it so we are well into that and we are publishing data quarterly or just about as we're processing it like we first had really good results from the camera and we saw lots of people drop their speed right so that was really good and i need to see that continued sustained into the future

So as part of my quarterly update to you coming up, I will be reporting on the next set of quarterly data, what we're seeing, and continuing to monitor that. Once we monitor that at 18 months, we're going to take a look at the data, and we're going to decide if we should move the cameras to different locations. Because let's say we've been really successful at one, And clearly before we put the cameras at the 33 locations, we did a massive study to figure out which different places we need to put it. And we have lots of other locations where we think cameras could be useful. And as we see that other cities are rolling it out, by the way, Oakland just started their pilot, San Jose and others are next. I think collectively the pilot cities in a span of, Probably a year plus, we're going to be able to see if this is moving us in the right direction, and then continue our advocacy at the state level.

Well, and maybe I just missed the wrong meeting, but I at least would appreciate something maybe offline just about where the data is and what trends we've been able to observe. I know it's early days, but it just feels excruciatingly slow because we've seen what these things can do in other cities around the world. And it's not rocket science, but we're the United States of America, so we've got to figure it out for ourselves. Other countries don't count, I guess. I also wanted to confirm that the prior effort was known as Vision Zero. And Vision Zero was about a target 10 years hence, right, from 2014. Have we abandoned that? Have we continued it? What's the status of Vision Zero? And is there still a target by some date certain?

The goal is still the same. I do not want to have any fatalities on our street, period. But at this time, we do not have a time-bound target.

And I think it was very aspirational for us to think back in 2014 that this could be reached in a span of a decade. And I think as we work through everything and saw what worked, what didn't work, clearly we did not reach that target. But at the same time, we have made progress and at the very minimum held steady. while we are facing some serious headwinds in terms of, like I mentioned in my presentation, vehicle size, people post-pandemic. You know, I'll be honest with you, behaving badly in our streets. Commander Martin and I talk about it all the time, and I'm happy to say that they're going to be stepping up enforcement. So we've had a lot of challenges, and we have way more to go, and the goal is still zero, but it's not time bound as in the past.

Yeah, and I would encourage us not to fall for the line that if we don't meet it, we've failed. Because aggressive targets can lead to aggressive responses. And I think that's what we're all looking for here is to pour it on and to get the kind of change that we can sustain year after year. And certainly you and your staff shouldn't be hanging your head about not trying hard enough. I think we've got to keep trying even if we don't make it because we've got no alternative to be candid. Budget. Every plan that's adopted by a department in this city has a budget problem. And it makes a plan, and then the budget raises its ugly head after two years, and there goes the plan. Do you have any kind of commitments from the relevant authorities about funding what you're presenting us?

Yeah, I don't know about commitments, but I'll tell you where I am, which is we're currently working through our CIP, our capital improvement plan. And I do have some preliminary understanding of what my CIP budget might look like. And based on that preliminary understanding is what the draft work plan in front of you is today.

So it's informed by what I believe our CIP numbers will be moving forward into the next two years. As we finalize that, I obviously may need to make some adjustments. And as we have, as I've been given the budget for the CIP, it makes some assumptions, right, in terms of what grants we might get, based on prior experiences, things like that, our best case assumptions based on what we know, as Brie would say. And that might change, and I'll just need to adjust my plan accordingly. But I think I have a pretty solid understanding of what the CIP would look like for streets moving forward, and the draft plan is informed by that.

Well, I'll limit it to this. One thing we do know, that if we don't save the muni, we're going to have a hell of a time funding any street anywhere. And we've got to keep ourselves on track for that big objective, which we heard about earlier today. Thank you again, colleagues, for presenting us with such a quality piece of work. And I look forward to voting for it. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Director Hemminger. Director Henderson?

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, everyone, for the very robust, especially you, Director Wise, for the very robust and just thorough presentation and materials. I have a couple of questions. Just one around, I saw that in the report you said that this is also a, Vision Zero was a best practice at the time that was accepted by the Department of Transportation, and now this approach is as well. Are there other approaches out there, and this is just the best one that fits San Francisco? Or is this sort of the revisioning of Vision Zero, maybe the 2.0 version?

Yeah, it's the culmination of all best practices all throughout the United States. Vision Zero as a policy is actually adopted in 60 to 70 cities in the United States. And the safe system approach that I'm asking you to adopt today is also adopted by the Department of Transportation. And while they don't have an official Vision Zero policy, they certainly are working towards the very same goals. So as we move forward, we look at what other cities are doing. Hoboken is a place that is raised a lot to talk about successes of Vision Zero. We talk a lot with our colleagues about different tools that we have at our disposal. to implement. And what is in front of you today reflects what we think are best practices from talking with other jurisdictions, from what we know from the National Association of City Transportation Officials, which we work with, which is basically our industry organization, kind of like HAPTA is for transit, and just our own learnings here in San Francisco because I hate to repeat this, but I do think it's true. We are unique. We have so many different modalities on our streets. We are the first in experience in a lot of them. So kind of navigating safety with different tools, we're trying different things. And if they don't work, we remove them. sometimes with some fanfare. But we try things on the street and we evaluate them. And then whatever we think is best in our own context here in San Francisco is what's being proposed today on our tools. And we can change them. This is not set in stone. That's what I like about it.

And in terms of the adoption of this sort of new strategy going forward, should there be funding resources available competitively, would this better position us to apply for those, do you think? I know we can't predict the future, but I just wonder what position would we be in and how much better does this sort of get us ready for opportunities that might come up in the future?

Thank you for that question. I think it will position us better, because having a policy being adopted by the board, but also by the mayor and by the board of supervisors is always scoring you points when you apply for different things. And then I think we have a robust program. And in the past, maybe what we have called shovel-ready projects, if you would, that are already in line, that we're already working towards, that also scores pretty high. So to the extent that any future money is available, I think we're well set up to try and be competitive for them. And I'm crossing my fingers, because I won't lie to you, it is absolutely a tough environment to get funding right now.

Understood. And then I think my last question or really just point that I want to highlight is I appreciate so much the coordination across the city departments. I think during COVID, we learned that a lot of us work in silos, and it's much more efficient for us to work together and coordinate. And I think as we implement all of these new strategies and policies to provide affordable housing, but also just build more housing in the city, I would just ask that there's special attention paid to the areas where housing is being built in places that it doesn't exist. And of course, it's infill in some way, but it could be in parts of the eastern and maybe even the western parts of the city. And I know I mentioned this to you before, but I think there are places that have neighborhoods that don't have sidewalks, that don't have much street infrastructure, and that cars, I think, are really used to treating the streets that do exist as highways and sort of street level throughways that that just has led to some maybe less than good behavior in terms of the driving. And so I would hope that as we start to see more housing developments built, certain areas of the city in certain parts of the city and we see you know hundreds and you know hopefully thousands of new families moving in that we coordinate very well with the mayor's office of housing and the other the other city departments you know planning as well just to make sure that the improvements that happen are of course the infrastructure improvements that are needed but really thoughtful about how we may prepare those neighborhoods for streets that they may not have ever seen. And I'm particularly thinking about along Evans and Ennis. And we see housing coming up, but the infrastructure does not match the number of or the the number of families that we know will be moving in, especially given the size of the units that are out in those types of areas. So I just ask for a little bit of special attention and connection with the housing departments or the housing related sort of entities in San Francisco to make sure that everything is on the right timing. And so that those families that are moving in and we're asking to invest in parts of the city that have sort of been underdeveloped, that they also are met with improvements that will help help more families move in. Thank you.

Thank you, Director Henderson. Director Felder.

Thank you. I want to thank my colleagues and the agency for all the work that's gone into this. I think it's something that I'm really happy to move forward and support. One thing that I wanted to touch on just for a minute, we heard a lot about seniors and some of the concerns that seniors have. And interestingly, it often is in places that involve things like micro-modes, like like scooters. And across the city, I think we hear a lot about safety concerns around some of these modes that don't get a lot of attention. And I just want to make sure that through this process that we don't lose sight of that, that we continue to look at how we can begin to have some level of enforcement that does tell a story of accountability across all modes. Because I think when we talk about street safety, it should be something that we are all universally behind. And yet, I think sometimes people, you know, we hear this in the rhetoric in San Francisco, the war on cars, you know, and so forth and so on. And that is not what any of this is about. And I think that the more that we can work through these issues of accountability across all modes, the better positioned we will be to be unified as we work to actually implement these measures moving forward. And so I just want us to think about that. and how we can enhance the accountability around some of these modes. I talk to my mother and her friends and the things they worry about. And they're literally worried about what they encounter on the sidewalk, and in some cases, as they cross the street, whether it's cars or bikes. And particularly with e-bikes and scooters that are now operating at higher and higher speeds, how do we make sure that those modes are part of the conversation in terms of this conversation around speed in particular?

Thank you, Director Felder. Vice Chair Kahina?

Thank you, Chair. Sorry to double-dip here, but I did want to just elevate some parts of what we're deciding on today, specifically around a focus on prioritizing street safety improvements on the higher injury corridor, and specifically in equity priority neighborhoods. And that will speak a little bit to what the direction that Director Henderson was noting. I wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to speak to that piece, Victoria.

Thank you very much for that opportunity. I think one of the very first slides I shared with you is just how much of our high injury network are in equity priority neighborhoods. And I really just want to give an example of what we've done in the past and talk a little bit about the future and in the past. And this has been mentioned by one of our speakers about the Tenderloin Task Force and also want to acknowledge Kimberly Leong behind me, who actually did so much of the tenderloin work. And if you think about the tenderloin, all of it is on the high injury network. And we've touched every single street in that neighborhood to make it safer. And I believe you've heard a little bit about that in public testimony. So moving forward, I'm really curious to see what the new high injury network is going to show us, where those areas are, how they're going to overlap with priority neighborhoods. And in particular, we've kind of covered a lot of the downtown core, if you would, through the Tenderloin. But we obviously need to look at the southeast portion of the city and see what's going on in other corridors. People mentioned Evans, Oakdale, Bayshore as examples of some of the streets that we may need to take a look at and see how the new HIN aligns with that and what potential projects we can do to focus in that area. And then it's not just about equity priority neighborhoods per se as shown in that map, but I think it's also about some of our elderly population and transit-dependent population. And so with that, I think there's a couple of tools that we have that A, we've been using all along in terms of just allowing people that are elderly, more time to cross the street as we adjust signal timing as one of our tools. And then, of course, it goes without saying, daylighting, where they're more visible. And so one of our focuses moving forward on the daylighting plan is around, I say institutional uses, really senior centers and our community centers and libraries where a lot of our seniors go. So it's the combination of all those things that I think, for me, helps deliver or continue to deliver this work in equity neighborhoods. And keeping track of the statistics, like at the end of the year, how many of whatever we put in in our equity neighborhoods, not just how many, but also what are the outcomes, like both.

And we've heard about that today as well.

And you touch upon this a little bit in what you just said right now, but I also wanted to give you an opportunity to break down the public's expectation, but also our expectation as it pertains to the public dashboard and understanding how does this materially change the information that we're going to receive on a quarterly basis and what the public's going to see as well.

So we'll be working with the mayor's office as part of the task force that I mentioned to figure out exactly which metrics we'll be sharing. We have a pretty good idea at staff level already, kind of what we have in mind. We just wanted to, in the spirit of collaboration, talk with other departments in the mayor's office to finalize what that looks like. The dashboards will be public. We expect to probably publish them quarterly. But TBD is we work through that in the next 100 days. And then as far as reporting back to the board, you know, I'm obviously open to your suggestions, happy to bring it back as part of my quarterly update here or in whichever form you and Director Kirschbaum ask me to.

Absolutely. I think in the interest of just daylighting this, It would be wonderful to see it as part of your quarterly updates. But again, as all these different efforts are kind of converging into one, perhaps we can revisit that. But definitely with some frequency with the amount of data as it gets updated would be great. The other piece I wanted to highlight or to give you an opportunity to speak to as well, Victoria, is how we, there may be this perception that public health is the sole keeper of the high injury network map. And just understanding how we as an agency, again, breaking down the silos, are collaborating with public health in creating this map.

Thank you for that. And while public health has certainly taken the lead on that, we will be seeing the draft of that map and having a working session already scheduled for a couple of weeks from now where we review the map together, talk it through, see what's different. So it is a collaborative effort. And we also support some of the public health work just through a work order as well. So we're making sure that they have the resources to do this work.

In ballpark, when do we expect to see it?

Before Q1 of 2026. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Kahina. I have a couple of questions, director-wise. And so I'm curious about some things about timing. So when we're thinking about the various benchmarks, starting perhaps with 100 days, is that commencing at the point of this board's action today? Or when does 100 days begin?

The 100 days begins when the mayor announced the executive directive, because that is his 100 days. Very good.

Lickety split. And are there additional actions that are required by other bodies, other commissions, before the working group is established? Or are we ready to go with that?

It has already been established and met for the first time last week.

Oh, very good. I'm happy to hear that. So one question that came through, and this is just because our projects, our safety projects, can be sometimes on a more complex and long timeline. There seems to be a bit of confusion, and perhaps here on the board, With regard to our commitments, projects that are being completed versus being approved, would you take a minute and just kind of talk about the distinction there and what our goals are with regard to how many projects we're hoping to complete? to complete in the, I think in the first year or maybe 18 months timeline.

Yeah, thank you for that question. I appreciate the opportunity to kind of parse it all out because you're right, there's 100 days, six months, you know, 18 months, all that good stuff. I think just to back up a little bit and talk about the 18 months and the, like why 18, why not 24, why not 12, right? So my thinking on the 18 months is to finish out this fiscal year

and then do the next fiscal year with the new CIP, right? So just like I'm, 18 months is related to like the pots of money that I have, if you wouldn't. Also, it's a good solid amount of time for us to think about on delivering of these projects, which sometimes take a minute. specific to your question about approval and delivery, because those can mean two very separate things, right? So when we talk about approval, that means the approval of MTA board of directors for a project, so you guys voting on it. Sometimes it takes a while before something is actually implemented and on the street. And I'll give some real examples of specific projects that you have voted here as a body. For example, you may recall you voted for the Beach Street quick build. And that was some number of months ago. It was in, I want to say, 2025. And it was a very beloved project out towards the western portion of the city, or sorry, the Fisherman's Wharf. And we have to coordinate actually putting the project onto the street with the National Park Service, because part of that piece of project delivery runs through their property. We've done some stuff and some construction of the project already that's under our jurisdiction, but to complete and quote unquote deliver the totality of the project. We're just finishing some coordination with NPS, which of course, you may recall, wasn't working for a while because of the federal shutdown and so on. So there's unexpected things that can go on like that between your approval and also completion. Another very common thing that happens is We approve the project here, but because we follow the paving and it's coordinated with the Department of Public Works, before we put something into the ground, we are waiting for the Department of Public Works to pave the street. A really good example of that that you've recently approved is the oak. bike lane. So we've broken up that into a couple of phases. And we've delivered, literally, you can go there now and see down in construction, the left turn on Oak and Masonic that we're working through right now. And then a little bit later, the Department of Public Works will come through and pave. And their paving schedule also changes. So we're trying to do our best to adjust our shop's workload to go behind them. and do the bike lane. So this is a little bit of the nitty gritty, but I wanted to daylight again, no pun intended, how some of that stuff works between the approval timeline here at the board of directors and also when we actually put things into the ground. So then next to your second part of your question, can I talk a little bit more about the specifics of what we're approving versus what we're delivering? I would say pretty much for the most part, there's a couple exceptions, but for the most part, what you see in the 18-month plan is our delivery deadline. So most of the stuff that's in there is we're trying to put into the ground on that time frame.

Very good. Thank you. That is very helpful. And I know that the streets quarterly is, you know, a very robust report. And some of these things are, they don't fit nicely in a sound bite. But I do encourage you to touch on that as much as possible. In your quarterly report, it's very helpful for the board. All right, and now I have a couple of comments that I'd just like to bring forward. As was mentioned by a number of my colleagues, we're all waiting with bated breath for the updated high injury network. I'm very hopeful that that will, include some good news with regards to the efficacy of the projects that we've undertaken. But we won't count those chickens until they're hatched. How do, and maybe this is a discussion offline, but I think that how we as a board are, how we receive that information and the opportunity for the public to receive that information at the same time as we do I think is something that's really worth exploring. It's going to be, I predict, a lot to digest and understand and draw conclusions from because Each area has its own complexities, but I'd love to take some time to consider how we want to respond as a board and in our hearings to the release of that information by the health department. So that's just a thought for the future. I am very heartened by the Supervisor Melgar's and the Mayor's leadership on this, and particularly I think it's so, so important that we are working in an interagency fashion on this incredibly important issue for the life and safety of anyone. Any one of us could be injured or killed on our streets. And it's something that you mentioned, rowing in the same direction. I think that this is a really important I wonder if there's any opportunities we could look to over the course of the medium-term future to work with other commissions for these other agencies to perhaps joint hearings on topics as they arise that involve this collaboration. I think that that could be fruitful. And so that is one of the thoughts that I have. And And in particular, I feel like the newest piece or the piece that I'm very interested in seeing is issues around education. I think that we are, there's an education comes in a lot of, forms, and I think that that's really good that SFUSD, as constrained as they are, are included as an agency that is part of this collaboration and working with youth to help the next generation be more safe than the generation before, hopefully. And I read in the staff report an initiative for training city workers on very important safety practices that are responsibility of our city family. And I really applaud that. I think I could go on and on, but I really feel that many of the topics that I would want to discuss have really been covered very thoroughly in committee. AND I WANT TO THANK AGAIN OUR BOARD COMMITTEE MEMBERS. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO THANK CITY PARTNERS WHO ARE HERE TODAY, CAPTAIN O'KEEFE FROM SFFD AND MR. PARDO FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH, THANK YOU SO MUCH Being here, I know that Commander Martin wasn't able to be here, but that partnership with SFPD is critically important and the commitment, the ongoing commitment from PD to work with us to help make our streets safer is important. so, so important. And speaking on behalf of the agency, we're really grateful. And so I think that unless my colleagues, you have anything that you would like to add, I'd like to move forward to a vote. Do I have a motion and a second to approve?

I'll move to approve.

Thank you, Directors Hemminger and Hinze. Secretary Silva, can you please call the roll?

On the motion to approve the item, Director Chen?

Aye.

Chen, aye. Director Felder? Aye. Felder, aye. Director Hemminger?

Aye.

Heminger, aye. Director Henderson? Aye. Henderson, aye. Director Hinzey? Aye. Hinzey, aye. Director Kahina? Aye. Kahina, aye. Chair Tarloff?

Aye.

Tarloff, aye. Thank you. That item is approved.

Excuse me, Madam Chair, and pardon me, Board Secretary. I think there was a little bit of confusion. It sounded like we had two motions that were made almost simultaneously, both from Director Heminger and also from Director Hinzey, but we didn't have a second. So just for the sake of clarity, for the record, if we could... Just clarify that we've got one motion and then we need a second. I think it would be helpful. Thank you.

If I could suggest that perhaps the chair of the committee, her motion be the motion, and Director Chen as, wait, who was? Heminger. Oh, Director Heminger. Director Heminger's could be the second. Is that agreeable for you? Thank you very much.

I'm happy to do it again if you like.

Sure. Yes, you can. Does that satisfy? Thank you very much. Thank you, Stephanie. All right. Just to confirm that motion passed unanimously, 7 to 0. Very good. Colleagues, I'd like to suggest that we take a 10-minute break before moving on to the next item. We could reconvene at 4 o'clock.

I have 10 till. Very good. The board will reconvene at 4 o'clock.

Thank you.

SFGov TV. San Francisco Government Television.

Amen.

Item 12, presentation and discussion regarding an overview of Muni's service equity strategy.

JESSICA GARCIA- Good afternoon, board of directors, and I guess almost evening. My name is Jessica Garcia, and I'm the service planning manager in the transit operations division here at the SFMTA. And a part of our work in service planning is we implement the muni service equity strategy, which is updated every two years and is timed to inform the agency's budget process. We are preparing to return later this spring with this budget cycles update, but in anticipation of your review, we wanted to provide an overview of the equity strategy and how it informs our service planning. Before I get into the details of the muni service equity strategy, I wanted to highlight that it's one component of our broader set of efforts that we have here at the agency to advance equity across our work. And those efforts include our Title VI program, the safety equity initiative, and our racial equity policy. All of these together shape both how we plan service and how we work internally. And taken together, these initiatives are focused on improving outcomes for the customers who rely on our service the most. So the equity strategy is rooted in the muni equity policy, which is adopted by our board in 2014. The policy builds on the Title VI FTA requirements and provides guidance on the metrics, methods, and the timing for updates. It uses a neighborhood approach in addition to citywide accessibility, which we devised with a working group back in 2014. And these nine neighborhoods shown in the map were chosen because of their concentration of affordable housing, the low rate of access to private vehicles, concentration of people of color, and people with low income. And for the citywide accessibility routes, we selected them based on their high ridership of senior and people with disability populations. And at the heart of the muni equity policy and every strategy update that we've completed is the goal that as we invest in the muni system and make budget decisions that these neighborhoods and routes are benefiting just as much or more from the investments than the rest of the city. The same principle guides us when we have to make difficult budget decisions as well so that the impacts do not fall disproportionately on these neighborhoods and routes. So listed here are the nine neighborhoods and the routes that serve them that we focus on for the equity strategy. Also included are the routes that serve high concentrations of seniors and people with disabilities listed here at the top. The first equity strategy was adopted in 2016, which marks this year's update as 10 years of applying the equity strategy to our service planning work. Each report has had a focus that builds upon the previous one and is tailored to what is happening at the agency at the time and our budget outlook. Over the years, we focused on putting the equity strategy principles into practice, and in the past few years, that focus has continued to be applying those principles in a cost-neutral environment and in preparing for service adjustments. As we prepare this year's update later this spring, the report is organized around four main components. The first includes a recap of all the transit improvements that we've implemented on equity routes during the previous budget cycle. The second is the report provides a review and analysis of transit performance metrics explaining how equity routes are performing compared to the route system wide. And third, it summarizes new initiatives and projects that we currently have underway. And then finally, the report includes budget recommendations based on projected funding for the upcoming budget cycle. So here's a preview and example of some of those transit improvements that we'll be highlighting in the report. These include both capital and operational improvements that have been implemented on equity routes here, such as the 29 Sunset with the capital improvement project that improved stop safety along Sunset Boulevard and operational efficiencies that we've implemented to add more trips to address school crowding. Also the M ocean views capital safety project which is providing safer boarding islands out in ocean view and operationally We've also implemented some schedule adjustments that are proven for liability on this route. So For the data performance component, we look at different service metrics at the route level, but also look at how the performance of equity routes compares to non-equity routes as an indicator of how well we are prioritizing those equity routes in the system. The metrics we'll be analyzing include service delivery, which is a metric that measures scheduled versus delivered service to our customers on the streets. Crowding, we measure through trips that are over capacity. We look at headway adherence, which measures the reliability of our service. And transit access is measured through how many amenities and destinations are within a reasonable travel time from our equity neighborhoods. The report is also going to recap some new initiatives and projects underway that we are doing to strengthen and advance the equity strategy. One key goal identified in the last equity strategy update was to reconvene the muni equity working group. The original equity working group was vital in developing the muni equity policy in 2014 and also the first equity strategy in 2016. In February of 2024, we held our first meeting with the new Equity Working Group and have been meeting at least bimonthly. The members represent organizations and stakeholders that either fall within one of the neighborhoods or a transit-dependent population. And to date, the group's work has primarily focused on developing a new system-wide service evaluation approach. They also have served as a key sounding board as we navigated difficult service decisions such as the ones that happened this last summer. So in collaboration with the Muni Equity Working Group, we are also developing a more robust and system-wide approach to measuring our service impacts. The goal of this new service evaluation is to extend the Muni Equity Strategy principles beyond equity routes so they inform both service needs and priorities and how our service changes affect our most transit-dependent customers. So over the next few years, we aim to standardize this expanded framework that combines performance and demographic data as part of a data-driven approach to our service planning, including new demographic data from the Muni onboard customer survey that we're working on getting those results finalized. So for the upcoming budget cycle, we plan to continue applying the equity strategy principles to cost-neutral service planning. As we did last summer, though, we will continue to return to the board for guidance when difficult decisions are required to scale or adjust our service. We also plan to incorporate the system-wide service evaluation work when presenting those decisions as we move towards standardizing that practice in collaboration with the Muni Equity Working Group. And all this will be detailed in the equity strategy update that will be coming to you all in the spring and present and for approval as part of the budget process. That concludes my presentation. Thank you for your time, and I'm happy to answer any follow-up questions.

Thank you very much. I would like to open public comment for this item for two minutes each.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There'll be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. I do have one speaker card for Richard Bernal. Or any other speakers in the room that want to provide comment can do so.

Hello. Jaime with San Francisco Transit Writers. I just want to point out that sometimes we use equity quite often without really knowing what it means. So I just want to focus to ensure that equity really means evening the playing field. And we should also pursue policies that lead to that. For example, if we have the resources and the political will, our fare should be very affordable so that people who can't afford it doesn't have to do paperwork. We know that the Lifeline program is something that's not really applied for just because, again, it's paperwork. You still have to pay 50%. And then finally, I'm part of the equity working group as well. And this really came to mind much more recently with the Kei Ingle side, Red Lanes, for example. We should really invest in culturally appropriate language, culturally appropriate staff to be able to communicate all these projects using, for example, the monolingual Chinese community. This is something that in the Tenderloin, it was a difficult group really engage with, but we do need to invest resources so that we don't come back, you know, years down the line and say, oh, you didn't do outreach to us. You didn't hear us. So kind of like my comment earlier, let's invest in those so that decisions that are made are well-informed and we don't, you know, backslide from the decisions that are made. So thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers for this item? Seeing none in the room and no accommodation requests.

We will now close public comment for this item. Ms. Garcia, thank you so much for your presentation. This is very helpful to us as we head into a time of uncertainty with regard to our budget. And directors, do you have questions or comments about the presentation? Vice Chair Kahina.

Thank you so much for your presentation, Jessica. I did have some questions around the evaluation of how we're tracking our performance data review. Just so I better understand, as we get this data, How do we then operationalize solutions? What's the work stream that happens there? We get some data. Perhaps we see some things that aren't looking so great in particular equity neighborhoods. And how quickly do we make adjustments in real time? What is the work stream? What would the workflow look for that?

Yeah, with the equity strategy update, we do a holistic look at all of these metrics together. But we do find, as things progress in between service changes, the needs change of the system. So these metrics that we've identified do match what we're looking at on a regular basis. That helps us inform one service change to the next. So one thing we're trying to do is do more robust evaluation in between as well, as well as looking at overall how do we prioritize the needs. Because what we're feeling right now is there's a lot of service needs. There's a lot of demand. There's a lot of competing priorities. have a sense of what needs the help and where the help is needed. But we're planning to use this equity strategy to help us prioritize more in real time which routes are going to get the service and how much we can allocate based off the resources we have available. So it's all helping us build a framework of how do we prioritize the service, where the metrics help us identify where the help is needed.

And maybe more for Julie then. As we budget season and would love to see how it's coming in and out, how this data looks. I'm sorry.

I'm going to grab your mic.

Is this better? OK. It's like a TED Talk. As we start to see what this data looks like, what we're learning from it, we'd love to see a presentation that has those data points, just so we can better appreciate what you're seeing behind the screen. What are our menu of options that we can have given our constraints? And how are you balancing those things?

Thank you for that question. The main reason that I asked Jessica to do this presentation today is because we wanted particularly our newest board members to understand what the equity strategy was before Jessica comes back and takes that deep dive into all of the data and the findings. When we developed the equity strategy, it was intended to be a tool both in times where we had resources to spend, but also when we were contracting. So for example, when we do service reductions, we also look at it through this lens and try to make sure that we are not impacting our community equity strategy neighborhoods more. than other neighborhoods and protecting where we can. Where we have resources to expand, this is also a place where we look. The other reason that we focus on such a diverse set of metrics is the plan is intended to be very tailored and very tactical. So in Chinatown, historically, crowding has been one of the most important metrics, whereas in neighborhoods like the Bayview, travel time and access has been the biggest challenge. So in the Bayview's example, you know, we added the 15 Express, which, you know, increased access to jobs like ninefold there. In Chinatown, we've been more incrementally adding service and adding options to address crowding, which now with the central subway, we've been really able to tackle something that in previous years we hadn't been able to. So the data doesn't make our choices easier, but it's designed to inform them and make sure the decisions we make reflect our values.

In terms of additional data, we heard a public comment affordability can be a barrier for folks to take transit. I wonder how we're also looking at safety and even cleanliness. I know we did some work with Bloomberg, and we heard a little bit about it a couple of meetings ago. I'm just interested in understanding how that is coming into the fold of the data that we're looking at, just so we can get a holistic picture of, in these equity neighborhoods, what are some of the barriers or the challenges that folks are having or experiencing, our customers are experiencing as they're taking the service, and giving us important data sets to understand how do we improve service.

Jessica, can you bring up your first slide? Yeah. This piece is very focused on muni service and on the routes, but it is complemented by the safety equity initiative, which is looking at the customer experience, looking at how we reduce harassment. We've been collecting, I think, some very meaningful data that's helping us to deploy RESOURCES. SO THE TWO PIECES REALLY WORK TOGETHER. AND WE ARE, I BELIEVE, EVEN THOUGH THE MUNI EQUITY WORKING GROUP WAS REALLY CONVENED TO FOCUS ON THE SERVICE, WE ARE ALSO GETTING MEANINGFUL FEEDBACK FROM THEM ON THE SAFETY EQUITY INITIATIVE AS WELL AS SOME OF THESE AFFORDABILITY QUESTIONS. It's one of the main reasons you're hearing me talk about the Clipper Start program kind of in any venue that we can. We very much want to make sure that everybody that qualifies for these programs has access to these programs, and that's something that we've been seeking guidance on.

That was it, but one more thing. So as we get this data and we're looking at equity neighborhoods, something that I've been really proud that this board has done in the past couple of years is ensure that we have budget for in-language and culturally responsive outreach and engagement. It has been so wonderful to see. those boots on the ground and going into neighborhoods to do that very work that you were talking to, Julie, of meeting community groups, talking about different ways to engage in the system to reduce those barriers, and would love to just learn more about how Our communications team is also deploying this information as they go into neighborhoods and can support the work that we're doing to ensure that we're giving proper service to those equity neighborhoods.

Yeah, we can definitely make sure we cover that in this year's update because there's a lot of work that's going on at the agency. And even within our own working group, we got a lot of feedback in how we evaluate our service changes, especially from the summer and incorporating writer surveys, intercept surveys after we do a service change, making sure those are in language and they're being accessible to those different groups as well. So yeah, we'll definitely include that.

Thank you, Vice Chair Kahina. Ms. Garcia, I am curious how our equity strategy, I know that our paratransit service, essential trip card, those kinds of additional service around accessibility is a really important part of equity. And can you just talk a little bit more about, how, because I'm focused on slide four and the citywide accessibility routes as it pertains to how those align with the different equity priority neighborhoods. Is it fair to say that where there are maybe fewer residents who require those services, say in the Bayview, which I don't see... represented there, that that's being taken up. Well, Bayview, since Director Henderson isn't here, we shouldn't lose an opportunity to mention the Bayview shuttle. But how do we think about that aspect of our equity work?

Yeah, the original routes that are listed there, those were based off of where we were seeing the highest ridership of people using some of the services that we have to help supplement income for especially seniors and people with disability through those passes. One of the things we're interested in doing in the next two years in collaboration with the working group is really taking on that list of routes and making sure that the data still supports that those are the ones that we should be prioritizing by using demographic data, our onboard survey data, and other resources that we have available. We also had somebody who was on the Paratransit Coordinating Council be part of the working group. And so we're trying to get that perspective as much as we can when we're doing this work. But overall, we definitely prioritize these routes just as much as the neighborhoods, understanding that those are vital connections to senior services as well as hospitals and medical care centers and things like that. And so one of the other things we're looking at, especially with the travel access, is looking at where senior housing is. Some of those topics have been coming up to be part of the focus and some of the resource centers that seniors and people with disabilities rely on throughout the city. So maybe they're not coming from a specific neighborhood, but these are also areas that need to have some sort of service.

I really appreciate that. And I'd like to yield to any other colleagues who may have questions. Very good. Well, we will really look forward to seeing you again as we get closer to finalizing our budget. This is very helpful to get a preview. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

I believe that concludes our business for today. I would like to thank my colleagues, our staff, and members of the public. We are now adjourned. Our next meetings will be on February 3 and February 17. Thank you.