Municipal Transportation Agency - Regular Meeting

GOOD AFTERNOON, I'M NOW CALLING THE MARCH 17, 2026 REGULAR MEETING OF THE MUNICIPAL TRANSPORTATION AGENCY BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND PARKING AUTHORITY COMMISSION TO ORDER. SECRETARY SILVA, PLEASE CALL THE ROLL.

ON THE ROLL, DIRECTOR CHEN.

PRESENT.

CHEN, PRESENT. DIRECTOR FELDER.

PRESENT.

FELDER, PRESENT. DIRECTOR HINSEY.

Present.

HINDSY, present. Chair TARLOV? Present. TARLOV, present. We are expecting Directors Hemminger and Kahina to join us momentarily. We are not expecting Director Henderson today. For the record, I note that Director Hinsey is attending this meeting remotely. Director Hinsey 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. Places you on item number four, approval of minutes for the February 3rd and the March 3rd meetings.

Directors, are there any changes to the minutes? Hearing none, I will 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. Sir, it's not time for public comment yet. Unless you have public comment for the minutes. Very good. There will be a warning sound at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. Go ahead.

Thank you. Bob Feinbaum. I'm president of Save Muni, but I'm speaking here solely on my own behalf. At the last meeting in March, you passed approval for the Potrero Yard project. And I understand that's now going to the Board of Supervisors. As I've observed this project over the years, I think fiasco is probably the best word that could characterize it.

As you know, it started out as a. Mr. Feinbaum, I'm sorry, is this a comment on the last meeting or is this a correction to the minutes?

Comment.

Oh, the time to comment was at the last meeting. Thank you. If you wish to correct the minutes, that's what this is for. No, no.

Not as far as I know. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other members of the public wanting to provide comment for the minutes? I'm seeing none in the room and no accommodation requests.

Thank you. We will now close public comment. May I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes?

So moved. Second.

Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On the motion to approve the minutes, Director Chen?

Aye.

Chen, aye. Director Felder?

Aye.

Felder, aye. Director Hinzey? Aye. Hinzey, aye. Chair Tarloff? Aye. Tarloff, aye. Thank you. The minutes are approved unanimously.

Secretary Silva, please call the next item.

Directors, that places you on communications. Aye. Evnen? Please call the next item. That places you on item number six, the director's report.

Good afternoon, directors, and happy St. Patrick's Day. I'm disappointed in my own lack of celebration, but I am excited. I'm also really pleased to begin this report with some good news about the environment. A new report was just released by the global coalition called Breathe Cities. It recognized 19 global cities that slashed two toxic air pollutants by more than 20% since 2010. San Francisco was the only North American city to have achieved this reduction in air pollution. We reduced fine particulate pollution and nitrogen dioxide by nearly 25%. This accomplishment reflects years of coordinated work across multiple city departments to reduce emissions and improve air quality, really championed by the Department of the Environment and our Climate Action Plan. Our agency has done its part. I'm proud that Muni has one of the greenest fleets in North America and has relied on electric power for more than a century for our light rail vehicles, our cable cars, our trolley buses, and our historic streetcars. As you know, we also rely on renewable diesel and our fossil fuel free for our hybrid buses. We also have the cleanest taxi fleet of any major U.S. city, with more than 90% of our vehicles being low-emission vehicles. And we're working to make San Francisco one of the best cities in the world to walk and bike, with ongoing investments in new sidewalks, safer streets, and expanded bike lane infrastructure. Congratulations to all of the agencies, corporations, and organizations that have helped make our air cleaner to breathe, and let's keep up this important work. I also want to celebrate that tomorrow is Transit Employee Appreciation Day. And I want to take this opportunity to personally thank our transit employees and transit employees throughout the Bay Area for their hard work and dedication. This is not easy work. Muni operators maneuver some of the most difficult terrain for driving a large vehicle in any North American city. And that's not to mention the parades, the medical emergencies, the protests, the construction, rain, blackouts, and all the other challenges they face as they serve San Francisco every day. And those are just our Muni operators. There are so many workers behind the scenes making Muni move safely and efficiently, keeping Muni accessible, and keeping Muni clean and safe. Please join me in appreciating these employees for their service to our city. A smile and a thank you can go a long way on Transit Employee Appreciation Day or any day. We also are thrilled whenever somebody calls 311 with an operator or employee accommodation. We share those with all of our employees as really the collective work of a great team. In addition to St. Patrick's Day, I also want to wish everyone a happy Women's History Month. I want to shout out all the women who work at the SFMTA in all kinds of jobs. You're role models, and I'm inspired and amazed by how you balance your work life and family life. A great part of my job is hearing from other women that they tried something new or went for a promotion because they saw me in my current role. And I'm really honored to have been appointed by the board to that role. I want to recommend you listen to our new Taken with Transportation podcast, which features women of San Francisco transit from the past and present. You can find it at sfmta.com slash podcast, as well as Apple, Spotify, and our YouTube channel, for whenever you listen to podcasts. Finally, I'd like to show you a short video that was created by SFGov TV. It's not often I get to highlight the work of our parking control officers, and this video is about two of our parking control officers who supported this year's Chinese New Year parade. During major events, our parking control officers keep traffic moving and direct cars away from the crowds. Let's meet Andy Zhou and Claudia Wu.

I'm a parking control officer. As a parking control officer, my role is actually to direct traffic during rush hours or during events. Growing up primarily on an Asian culture, everyone gets together and just celebrating a new year. Happy Lunar New Year.

Hi, my name is Claudia. I'm a parking control officer. I'm working as a DP placer team. We run the placards throughout the city daily. We're trying to make sure people are using placards that is valid and make sure placards that are being used belong to them. I come from a 100% Chinese, old school Chinese family and Lunar New Year means, that means like we get rid of all the old stuff, bad stuff from the previous year. We started with the new year, good fortune. Happy Lunar New Year.

That concludes my report.

Thank you, Director Kirschbaum. Before I open public comment, I would like to remind members of the public that they may provide comment on the topics Director Kirschbaum shared. Those are Breathe Cities report on reduction in air pollution. Transit Employee Appreciation Day, Women's History Month, and Parking Control Officers Supporting the Chinese New Year Parade. 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 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. Any members of the public who wish to speak on this item can come up to the podium at this time. This is for the director's report.

Yes, my name is Richard Johnson. I'm with a group called HVSAFE. I would like to comment on the air quality issue. I, as a resident of the Hayes Valley Lower Haight Western Addition, have been asking SFMTA to do air quality studies in our neighborhood. And I would invite every one of you to come to sit at a corner of Buchanan, Buchanan and Oak, Buchanan and Fell, and breathe the air. And tell me that, and especially as someone I've lived in the neighborhood for over 30 years, if you don't do the studies, how can you prove that the air quality? And we have studies that go to the Department of Environment that says our neighborhood is probably as bad or worse than what the Bayshore is. And we've been asking for studies for years, so I would say it's great to give yourself kudos, but if you're not doing the homework, that proves the air quality. And I would like, as I say, show us that you're improving air quality in our neighborhood. I would challenge you on that. As I said, as a resident that's lived there for 35 years, I can see from the particulates in our windows and just in the air quality in general has not improved. And you need to look at The interagency, as I said, with the Department of Environment marks our neighborhood as a hot spot, very similar to what happens in the Bayshore. And it's because of the amount of traffic that we have going through our neighborhood. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Any other speakers for the director's report?

Hi. Save Muni at its meeting on Monday passed the resolution in support of Transit Operator Appreciation Day. And we'd like to participate in the next one. So next year, perhaps Julie could pass something on the website so that organizations could sign up to support that as well. Thanks.

Thank you. Any other speakers on the director's report? Not quite yet. That'll be item number nine is general public comment. No problem. Seeing none in the room and no accommodation requests.

Public comment is now closed. Colleagues, any comments or questions on the director's report? Very good. Thank you, Director Kirschbaum. Let's move on to the next item. Secretary Silva, please call the next item.

Directors, that places you on item number seven, the Citizens Advisory Council report. And for today, actually, the CAC vice chair will present that during item number 11, the budget, after the staff presentation.

Thank you. Please call the next item.

Places you on item number eight, new or unfinished business by board members.

Directors, any new or unfinished business today? Very good. 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 general public comment for two minutes each.

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

Okay, I'll get into it a slightly different way. SFMTA has a lot of valuable property and also a lack of continuing funding. It's an obvious opportunity to use the property that you have to ensure a continuous stream of funding. I'm not going to get into the Potrero yard. That was a failure. But in the future, I think you need to develop this. And actually, as I look through the budget, you don't even have a line item that could be called public-private partnership. I think you should include that in your budget. Although it may be zero this year, I think it should be able to grow to a substantial number. Save Muni will be providing some ideas on how you can do that, and we'll submit that to Julie and to the board. But I think in the interim, you should at least think that and clearly articulate that you need to develop some private revenue streams that are not dependent on public funding. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi. Once again, my name is Richard Johnson with the group HVSAFE. For the past 66 weeks, members of our community have, in good faith, been documenting ongoing compliance issues related to the Hayes Valley weekend closure. Week after week, we have submitted reports, photographs, and observations about how this permitted closure is being managed. As you know, recently the situation has escalated further. The permit holder, the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association, has initiated legal action against us under the theory that documenting conditions on a public street constitutes harassment. Tens of thousands of dollars are now being spent litigating what should be routine civic oversight of a permitted closure, which you have allowed to happen because of no enforcement. Monica of the SFM SFMTA staff has admitted that. When a permit holder begins treating public documentation as a legal threat, it shows how far this program has drifted from its original purpose and how politicized disclosure has become, particularly given that your own agency was prepared to end this one block permit in 2020. 3. We have been calling for revocation of this permit for over a year. The community understands why that call has not been acted on. There is clear political movement behind efforts to permanently close Hay Street by our supervisor, but allowing a permit to continue operating in this manner creates serious legal and operational risk for this agency. If SFMTA cannot enforce its own permit conditions on a single block, how can the public trust the agency to manage the broader transportation system? The responsibility for what happens next will not fall on the community. It will fall on this agency. Enough is enough.

Thank you. Any other speakers for general public comment?

Hello. I live in Mission Bay, where we recently had a toddler fatality. And I just wanted to share with you that I have a three and a four-year-old. And the traffic safety is always on my mind when I'm walking around. And my children did go to that school that was right at that intersection. And they will go to Mission Bay Elementary. And so I just wanted to thank you for your efforts that you're doing with the quick build project to make that area safer. And when presented with more, to do more, I ask for your support because I think there will be efforts to do more. And I ask that you support those efforts to make the neighborhood safer. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers for general public comment? Seeing none in the room and no accommodation requests.

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

Directors, that places you on item number 10, your consent calendar. 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 public comment, please identify which item number you are speaking to. Item 10.1. Requesting the controller to allot funds and to draw warrants against such funds available or will be available in payment of the following claim against the SFMTA listed under item 10.1A in the agenda. Item 10.2, approving various routine parking and traffic modifications listed under 10.2A through K in the agenda. Item 10.3, approving parking modifications along the 8 Bayshore Muni route in Visitation Valley to improve and expand bus boarding areas by extending the sidewalk to create transit bulbs at five stops on Visitation Avenue and a transit boarding island at one stop on Geneva Avenue at Santos Street as part of the Eight Bayshore Visitation Valley Stop Improvements Project and making required certifications under the California Environmental Quality Act. Item 10.4, approving the agreement between the member agencies regarding the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Boards, JPBs, fiscal obligations to CalPERS between the City and County of San Francisco, the San Mateo County Transportation District, and Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority relating to establishing the JPB's contract with CalPERS and authorizes the Director of Transportation to execute the agreement contingent on approval by the Board of Supervisors. That concludes your consent calendar.

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 at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. Any speakers on the consent calendar can come up to the podium at this time. Seeing none in the audience and no accommodation requests.

Thank you. We will now close public comment. Directors, may I have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar?

So moved. Second.

Thank you. Secretary Silva, please call the roll.

On the motion to approve the consent calendar, 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 motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

Please call the next item.

Directors, that places you on your regular calendar. Item number 11, presentation and discussion regarding fiscal year 2026-2027 and fiscal year 2027-2028 budget balancing plan. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, directors. I'm Prima Horder. I'm the CFO of the MTA. And let me just get this open for you. As Christine mentioned, we're here today to talk about the balancing plan for the 26, 27, and 27, 28. Christine, could you give me a hand? I'm sorry. Sure, of course. Thank you. We're here to talk about the balancing plan for the 26, 27, 27, 28 budget. This is the time where I bring together for you all of the things that you've already talked about, how we're going to increase revenue, where we're going to become more efficient, and kind of pull it all together so that you can understand how we're going to actually balance the budget. So one thing that we did differently about the budget this year was that we really tried to bring the board along the entire policy-making process. So we came before you a number of times to talk about all of the major building blocks of the budget. In November, we talked about the local revenue measure. In December, we made our first presentation on the agency's revenue policy ideas. And at each subsequent presentation since that time, we've kind of reiterated those ideas to you to give the public a chance to make comment and also to make sure that we have consensus. In January, we talked about how how the agency is going to save money by becoming more efficient. And since that time, we've reiterated those efficiencies again to make sure that the public has an opportunity to comment and that the board has an opportunity to comment. And then we did our board workshop in February, beginning to bring these elements together. You had your first look at the capital budget in February, and then that brings us to today, the draft balancing plan. where I believe that the primary issues that are still open for discussion are what to do about the cable car fare and what is the plan for our final balancing. and what one-time sources should we use and in what proportion in 26, 27, and 27, 28 to finally balance the budget. The goal is to walk out of today's meeting with all of our major issues closed so that we can come back to you in March with a presentation on, I think the budget really serves two purposes. One, it's a financial document that's about dollars and cents, but it's also a strategic and a planning document to talk about how we are going to spend the public's money and what services we are going to provide over the next two years. And so the meetings in April will be more focused on how are we going to take all of the decisions that have already been made and allowing us to tell our story about how we're going to do good work with the public's money in April. So you'll see that on April 7th. And then on April 21st, we would take a vote on the budget, hopefully for it to be passed, for us to present it to the mayor on May 1st. So as a reminder, the plan that we've been working towards since December is a three-legged stool based on generating new money from the regional revenue measure and the local revenue measure, and then balancing those new revenues with becoming more efficient and potentially, in the long run, increasing other agency revenues. We started this cycle with quite a daunting task. It was a $307 million deficit in 26-27 that grows over time to $434 because expenditures grow faster than revenue, primarily because our revenue sources are growing at about 2% and expenditures are growing at about 3% because of the impact of COLA and CPI. So we've talked a lot about our new revenue sources. Our primary new revenue sources are the regional sales tax, the local parcel tax, and then our loan from the state. So we do anticipate that in... We do anticipate that we are going to get a small amount of money from the regional revenue measure in 26-27 as the dollars begin to flow. And as we've discussed through the work of the legislature and the governor, we are getting a loan for the state for $200 million. And these new sources together do close the bulk of our budget deficit. But there is still a little bit more work to be done. And the way that we did that work was with the revenue policy choices that you all have made along the way and then the efficiencies that the agency has been working on throughout the year. So to talk about those revenue proposals, our approach to parking was really grounded in a good government and common sense approach to parking, consistent with the mayor's vision for a local government that works for its citizens. We are presenting kind of no new big policy ideas, but just kind of the standard fare with a few small exceptions, one of those being that we are reducing certain fines. And that's because when you index fines and you have a fair cap, over time, all of those fines will reach the cap. And you lose the gradation between an infraction that's more impactful to the public and infraction that's less impactful to the public, and the dollar amounts associated with those fines. So there are select fines that we have reduced. One example of those is fixing your car in the public right away. Another example is curbing your wheels. So we're just trying to bring those citation amounts more in line with the infraction. On the tourism side, which we'll talk about in more depth, our primary change is to change the way that we are charging for cable car, both to simplify our fare structure and to raise more money. And with our ridership revenue, we are really excited to be introducing fare capping. So the primary revenue raiser in terms of transit revenue is eliminating the Clipper discount and indexing in 2728. But doing that allows us to introduce a new fare capping policy, which would mean that after you ride twice, after you tap twice, excuse me, your ticket would convert to an all-day ticket, and you would ride for the remainder of the day for free. And we're really excited about the ability of that new policy to drive transit ridership. So we've generally achieved consensus on those ideas with the exception of the cable car proposal. And what we heard from the board was some board members really wanted to believe in the inelasticity of demand for cable car and press that cable car ride higher. Other board members weren't quite so sure about that inelasticity of demand. And then other board members had some concerns about the impact on families. We also took our cable car proposals to the cable car stakeholders and the community. And their feedback was they did appreciate the fact that we were trying to simplify the cable cars. And they think that'll make it a lot easier to promote and market the cable car. They felt like moving from a $9 single ride ticket So quickly to the cable car plus pass just felt like too much change all at once and it felt like a particularly large change for families And they did have some concern that a higher price might suppress ridership. So taking all that feedback into account We want to give you this suite of Five options. The first option would be a $15 cable car plus. That was the original proposal that we came to you with in January. Since then, we've added some more options to be responsive to both your feedback and to community and stakeholder feedback. So we are now presenting an option that would include a $12 single ride, so moving the single ride ticket from 9 to 12, and also continuing with the concept of the Cable Car Plus to simplify our cable car ticket options. We would offer both a single ride and the Cable Car Plus. that Cable Car Plus would be $18 but would also include, with each paid ticket, two youth being able to ride free. So it's kind of balancing generating more revenue with also just keeping in mind how a more expensive ticket would impact a family who has to buy multiple tickets. We are also presenting an option that includes the $12 single ride and the $18 cable car plus without those two youth riding free. So you can see the revenue impact of allowing youth to ride free. It's about $500,000 a year. An additional option would be to take that original $15 cable car plus option and push up the revenue to $18. In that instance, there would be only one ticket available for cable car, and it would be the cable car plus. And then the last option would be just the Cable Car Plus with the youth riding free. And so you can see here all of the various options and their various impacts. All of the options that we're presenting you with are within the realm of what we had originally proposed with the $15. And the option that we have incorporated into the draft budget balancing that we're presenting you today is the $12 single ride with the $18 cable car plus with the two youth riding free. So the option that generates 1.1 in year one and 2.2 in year two. So just a little bit more detail on that option. Since it is our recommended option, we would implement that in January of 2027. As a reminder, if you have a monthly pass, you already get to ride free, and that policy would continue. And in response to that concern about not really knowing the elasticity of demand for cable car tickets, we would come back to the board in a year if there is decrease of 10% of cable car ridership, because that would tell us that there is something misaligned between ridership and the price. And it would give you all an opportunity to reconsider your policy. In other revenue updates, so even outside of the policy decisions that are made by the board, there are lots of external factors that impact our budget. And since we last talked, there have been some impacts that meant good things for the budget, and there have been some impacts that mean that we have to make some hard choices. So on the positive side, I think we've all seen in the paper that things from an economic perspective downtown are starting to turn around. We're starting to see more foot traffic. We're starting to see more leasing. interest in housing purchases in the city is going up. And so these are all positive signs for the economy. And they have resulted in the controller increasing its forecast for the general fund, which means an increase of about $30 million for the MTA in the MTA baselines. And on the also positive side, because of all of those same factors that are impacting the general fund, as well as our own efforts to provide really customer-friendly, reliable service and our efforts to optimize parking, we are seeing a $35 million increase per year in our own transit and parking revenues. So both of those positive signs, I think, are really positive indicators of the hard work that the city family is doing to revitalize San Francisco and the hard work that we're doing to make MTA services the services of choice. But unfortunately, that good news is offset by some bad news. And that bad news is that the MTC and the state controller's office are projecting a $25 million decrease per year in our state operating grants. Those are operating grants that are funded by sales taxes on diesel and gas. So when it's kind of a cruel policy paradox that the more successful we are in moving people out of their cars and into other modes of transit, the less gas they will buy, and so the less sales tax will be earned on those purchases, and the less funding there will be statewide for transportation. This, coupled with the fact that our largest form of state operating grant is allocated by revenue, meaning the more revenue a local agency generates, the larger share they get of this state pot. And this is to encourage local agencies to be as forward thinking as they can about generating revenue on their own. What we're seeing is that post-COVID, the share of revenue that the MTA generates through its own sources is less relative to the share of revenue generated by their own sources of other transit agencies in the state. That has been true since COVID, but the state made a policy decision to freeze the allocation to the pre-COVID allocation, where San Francisco was one of the areas that got the most of this revenue source. And now that this freeze is being unfrozen and the allocation is being allowed to float with the amount of local revenue generated, we are seeing a decrease in our proportion of this piece of state revenue. In the short term, that's bad news because, as I said, we're looking at a $25 million per year loss. But in the long run, if the regional and the local revenue measure are successful, those revenues will be counted as locally generated revenues. And we believe they'll tip the balance back in our favor. And we will, again, get a greater share of those STA revenue allocated funds from the state. On the expenditure side, just like revenue, things happen outside of our control that we have to respond to. The hardest thing that's happened since we started this process is that the Comptroller's Office The first thing that happens in the budget cycle is the budget system opens, and the controller has loaded what's called the base. And the base budget includes all of the changes that are due to shared citywide benefits, like health care, retiree health care, and retirement. And in the case of the base budgets for 26, 27, and 27, 28, we saw the cost of health care, retiree health care, and retirement go $40 million above what we had projected in year one and $60 million above what we had projected in year two. And this is a painful cost that is felt by all departments citywide and the city's budget itself. So this is also something that the city is grappling with in its budget. On a good news side, staff have worked really hard to be really thoughtful about the services that we procure from other city departments. And we have reduced the amount of those services by $10 million over the next two years. And the efficiency proposals that we presented to you in January are going to reduce our non-labor expenditure by $20 million in 26-27 and $32 million in 27-28. So that's really great progress that I'm really proud to show how hard we're working to become more efficient and reduce our expenditure profile. Another thing that I've incorporated that drives expenditure cost up is the debt service on the state loan. As a reminder, it's a 12-year loan. The first two years are interest only. We have to repayment term of 10 years, and the rate is variable and will float with SIFMA. So now that we know more about the terms of the loan, we're incorporating those into our expenditure projections. I think talking about an expenditure is an appropriate time to talk about how we achieve these savings. And we achieve these savings primarily by thinking about the way we organize our people. And one example of that is the reorg that we did last spring when Director Kirschbaum took over the role. We've been changing how we deliver our service, and an example of that is Muni Forward. When we roll out the red carpet for buses, they move more quickly, which means we can move the same number of people with fewer vehicles and therefore fewer operators, reducing our operating costs. We've become more efficient by using technology. A place where we've really worked hard to do that is in the paint sign and meter shops by implementing electronic inventory control, negotiating with external partners, and that's the work that we've been presenting to you each time we renew one of our major contracts, like tow or citations processing or paratransit. We've been really thoughtful in the way that we've renegotiated all of these contracts and tried to achieve similar service levels at a lower cost. And then, of course, near and dear to my heart, increasing our financial control and transparency, just making sure that we are being thoughtful and transparent about each dollar that we spend. So all of those things together, the policy choices you all have made to increase revenue, the outside policy impacts of better general fund and better transit and parking revenue offset by losses in operating grants, the reducing expenditure by becoming more efficient, offset by increased benefit costs citywide, brings us to the place we are today, where we have a small remaining deficit in 26-27 of about $70 million, and an even smaller remaining deficit in 27-28 of about $30 million. And to close this final piece of the budget, we need to think how we want to use our one-time sources to close that final bit until we get to the point where the revenue from the regional and local measures is flowing. So as a reminder, we have three major sources. Our agency reserves, which is 10% of our operating budget, which we have saved up over time. are one-time savings, which we often refer to fund balance, which essentially means in years where we make more than we spend, our bank account grows. And it's essentially like a savings. To draw an analogy to your personal life, it would be like your savings account. It's there to bail you out in case something unexpected happens. And then we had talked about flexing capital funds to operations. But in response to board feedback, our current balancing plan does not include $20 million in capital funds. What we've done instead is place them on reserve in the capital budget. We do have a proposed allocation for those projects, but we're recommending that we wait to actually make that allocation until after November, when we have more certainty after we get the results of the election. Because if we allocate that money to projects now, then the projects will kick off and they'll begin to spend. And that money might not be there next November if we need to rethink or recalibrate. So what we are proposing is using the state loan in year one, that's a $200 million state loan, which would leave us a remaining gap of $74 million, which we're proposing to fund with agency reserve. That's about half of the $140 that we have. And then using $32 million of fund balance in year two The choice to do agency reserve before fund balance is really driven by the fact that the fund balance is our most flexible source of funds. And with so much uncertainty in the world, it seems wise to hold that back and use it last so that we can maximize our flexibility. And of course, we look forward to hearing the board's feedback both the order in which we're choosing these sources and the proportionality in which we're using them. So where that leaves us at the end of the day, and we'll talk about this in a little bit more detail when I come back in April, in the big picture, the MTA budget will be 1.56 in 26-27 and 1.64 in 27-28. The growth, again, driven primarily by the cost in the benefits that we talked about, as well as cost of living wage increases. And then, as you can see, the numbers here happily balance. Revenue matches expenditure. So we have achieved a balanced budget with this proposal. And I do want to just take a minute to review the feedback that we heard from you all and talk about how we've incorporated each pieces of those feedback so that you can reflect and make sure that we have addressed your policy concerns. So the feedback that we heard was that we should prioritize that the board preferred a balanced approach, not depending on any one single source to balance the budget, and that there was a slight preference for using the operating reserve over the fund balance. So that's the balancing plan we've presented to you. As I mentioned, we've heard some mixed feedback on comfort with using capital and flexing to operating. So we've held that back and put it in a reserve account with identified projects, but not yet allocating to those projects so that the board can revisit in November if necessary. We heard a strong desire from the board to reduce the services of other departments, to reduce our own expenditure profile, and we've done that to the tune of $10 million over the two-year period. I think there was a lot of feedback about the cable car tickets, particularly around seeing if we could increase the fare and also consider options for youth and equity. Now that we are presenting two options, there is one option that goes all the way up to 18, and that option does include two youth writing free. We are not addressing an equity discount at this time. with the implementation of Clipper 2.0 and the need to transfer the cable car ticket from its current physical ticket to the Clipper 2.0 system. That felt like an administrative bridge too far, but it's something that we can certainly consider in future budget cycles. The board asked for some clarification about when fare increases would begin, and they would begin in January of 27 and January of 28, so at the beginning of each calendar year during the budget cycle. We had a request to further increase parking meter fees. And I just want to remind the board that we do have demand-based pricing. What the budget includes is a $0.25 increase to meter rates in the second year of the budget. So that means that's a floor below which the rate will not fall. But in areas where parking demand is high, that rate does go up. And in areas like the port, during a Warriors game, the hourly fee can go up to $20. So we really are trying to be thoughtful about maximizing our citation revenue. So we also heard a request to make sure that our fare evasion has a closer nexus to parking fines. We're going to come back in the spring with a discussion of our overall approach to compliance. And we can talk about that at that time. And then you also asked us to present some options for refilling the reserve. Our recommendation in this moment is to wait to have that discussion until after November, because we aren't quite sure what world we'll be living in in November of 2026. And the if one or both of the measures pass, there is a substantial difference into our financial circumstance than if one or both of the measures don't pass. And if we set a reserve refilling policy now, your thinking might change depending on what happens in November. And you might choose to be more conservative or more aggressive depending on that outcome. And so we're recommending that you wait until after November. So, um... In terms of our public process, we're nearing the end in terms of big milestone meetings. But there is lots of technical work that my team is doing in the background to get from here to May 1. We have a lot of line item budget adjustments to make to make sure that things are budgeted in the correct place. If there is an additional board or community feedback, of course, we'll be incorporating that. There is final budget balancing that happens because throughout the city's process, the city's making decisions and individual departments within the city are making decisions that then impact us. So we do have to be responsive all the way until the city's budget is passed. And then in terms of concrete things that will happen, I'll be back before you on April 7 for a hearing that's really focused on how we plan to spend the approved dollars to provide service to the public, and then two, our final vote to pass the budget. We submit our budget to the mayor on May 1. And then, like all city departments, we present to the Board of Supervisors. But unique to the MTA, the Board of Supervisors has the option to choose not to pass our budget. If they take no action, then our budget passes. The only action they can take is to not approve our budget, and they cannot make line item changes to the budget. It's a simple act or no act. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you, CFO Mahorder. Before the board asks questions and makes comment, I would like to call up the Citizens Advisory Council Vice Chair, Chris Arvin, to share his body's recommendations on this item. Thank you very much, Mr. Arvin.

Yeah. Hello, directors. We had a unanimous motion on some budget recommendations for you at our last meeting. We do recognize the weight and the gravity of the budget situation that the agency faces at the moment. So we had nine items that we voted on. And the first is we do appreciate the efficiency gains you've been making. Keep it up. We did, when we came to the one-time sources to kind of bridge the gap between now and potential revenue measures, we do prefer decreasing reliance on a state loan, which will have interest that makes it harder to fully close the deficit, and more reliance on the reserve fund when possible. We also do not support any kind of deprioritization of maintenance. That includes state of good repair as well as bus lifts and elevators at stations. We know that the state of good repair has been a key part of the very high satisfaction ratings that the agency has been receiving lately. We do support adjusting meter rates to raise more revenue, as well as charging for metered parking spaces on Sundays. Transit riders have to pay for the bus on a Sunday, but a driver does not have to pay for a parking space on a Sunday. We also recommend not raising bus or rail fares in this budget cycle. Voters are about to be asked to approve a higher sales tax as well as a parcel tax that allows pass-throughs to rent controlled tenants to save the transit agency. Cost of living is already extreme in San Francisco. And riders just faced two consecutive fare increases recently. And so adding a third and fourth fare increase as potentially proposed in the budget, which would make the local bus fare here the highest in the nation, is not something that we support at the moment. We do support the idea of raising the cable car fares to better match the cost of operation, which we understand is a very high cost of operation. And we understand that residents have easier access to the cable cars on their passes than a tourist might have on their single ride. And then we had two when it comes to fare capping. We love fare capping. We appreciate the daily fare capping, but also want to encourage you all to take a look at monthly fare capping. CFO Mahorda brought up some good points about potential barriers to implementation. Trials in other cities, we do think it's worth taking a look at so that riders who can't upfront pay the full cost of a monthly pass get the same benefits as those who can. And lastly, sorry, I think that was it. Let me double check and make sure I didn't miss anything. That was it. I think we accidentally reiterated a point twice in our actual motion, but those were the eight items. Thank you. Do you have any questions?

Yes, Vice Chair Arvin, before I move to public comment on all of item 11, I'd like to open it up to my colleagues. If you have any questions for Vice Chair Arvin, this is a good opportunity to ask them. Oh, Director Felder, pardon me.

Did you guys have any specific thoughts around the cable car fare in terms of how far that might go for you to be comfortable?

We weren't trying to prescribe a specific fare, just the idea of being okay with the raising of the single ride fare to better match the costs. So I don't want to speak for everyone on what the exact dollar amount would be. I think we were presented $15 in the presentation we were given.

Okay. Any other questions? Director Hemminger.

Your phrase on cable car fares is to bring it closer to the cost of operation. So what is that cost?

If I recall correctly, it's somewhere around $20 per passenger ride, but I would ask the FOMO order.

So we would have to go from $9 to $20 to cover it.

Closer to. We weren't saying match the cost of operation, but bring it closer to to help raise revenue for the agency.

I understand. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Just a quick one by Sarah Auburn, if I may. Were you all presented with this Kim Carr concept with the idea of Free Muni if you pay for the Cable Car Plus. That wasn't clear to me in your presentation.

We were presented with the idea of getting free Muni rides for the day when you buy a Cable Car ticket. I think it's a great idea. It's not something that we had a specific vote on in our motion.

OK, but your team would You didn't hear any objections or any good ideas or yeah.

We didn't discuss any objections to that sort of combined pass. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Director Kirschbaum?

Director Hinze, we developed some of the modified options based on a kind of a focus group of some of the leading tourism organizations at the city, including SF Travel, the Chamber, Union Square Alliance. And those meetings happened after the CAC meeting. The reason we didn't present them the additional options is because they didn't exist at the time.

Right. I have reviewed the presentation of today. It has some very interesting ideas for combined passes. We were presented with the general idea of getting Muniride's package with it, but not the specifics that you saw today.

Sorry to put you on the spot there for speaking for your whole body.

Totally OK. I appreciate the questions.

Thank you, Vice Chair Kahina.

I'm going to belabor the cable car question a little bit more. In your discussion about this item, did any of the CAC members raise any concerns around youth barriers, affordability of the change? Just wanted to get a sense of the tenor of the conversation.

Not that I recall. I think we always encourage the agency to look at the equity perspective. But I think there's an acknowledgment that a tourist visiting San Francisco to use a cable car as an attraction is a different use case than someone who is a resident who might just conveniently be close to a cable car line to ride it every day who has access to a monthly pass. I at one time did live near a cable car line. I did take it every day to get to work. It was beautiful. I loved it. And I did get that with my monthly pass.

Thank you.

Very good. Thank you, Vice Chair. Arvin, I'm sorry. And will you please convey our gratitude to the Citizens Advisory Council? Your recommendations are always very helpful to us.

Absolutely. Thank you for the time.

Thank you. All right. I am going 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. Any members of the public wishing to provide comment on this item number 11 can come up to the podium at this time.

Hi, my name is Richard Johnson. It's interesting, and I've been sitting through these presentations, and it's interesting to me as a transit rider that the usage of our streets I do not see anything in this solution towards getting funds and revenues from the Ubers, the Lyfts, the delivery companies using usage fees. I think you need to look at and move into the modern era of what is driving the usage of our streets. And the usage of our streets used to be taxis and transit. Now it's more so delivery services, ride-sharing, and others. You need to kind of look at a model that other cities have used this model to generate revenue fees of deliveries from goods that are delivered to people. They're using the streets so they should pay to use those streets. And San Francisco needs to, as always, it follows in its technology. We adopt it really fast. And the technological companies rip off our city with the funds. We need to have them generating more funds back into our city. And transit is, I'm a transit rider. I have a free transit. It's a lifeline for me. And I think we need to be more creative in our way solutions of finding funding for our public transit. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, board. Dylan Fabris with San Francisco Transit Riders. A lot of good things I've spoken about before. Love to see the fare capping for the day pass. Would love to see that expanded to monthly and potentially annual passes at some point. The data isn't there yet, but let's make that happen at some point. Love to see it, at least for the daily in this budget. Great to see increasing parking meter rates. Great to see common sense changes like charging the credit card fees. Also glad to see the youth cable car discount included in this version. I would go a step further and maybe say we should just make it free. Youth are free on the rest of Muni already. Let's extend that to the cable car. And we should also remember that over the years, as the cable car rate has gone up, ridership on the cable car has gone down. So it seems like there will be some changes to the cable car rate this budget cycle, but I think it's important to keep that in mind. A few things I still am concerned about. One is decreasing the fine prices for parking without also decreasing the fines for fare evasion. I feel like transit riders have been taking a lot of hits over not just this budget, but several budgets over the last few years. And it seems a little bit strange to be decreasing parking fines in a time of deficit without also looking at the equity component of it. We have a discussion on equity coming up next. It would be great to look into that. I'm glad that's on the table. And then also, fare increases. Like I said, a lot of the cost has already been borne on the riders. And like Chris mentioned, going up to 310 would make that the highest fare in the country, I think. So thank you.

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

I could clarify the amount of money that the agency receives every year from taxes on rideshare companies. It's $10 million a year.

Okay, very good. Thank you for addressing that point that was made. Directors, before I open it up to conversation, I have a couple of things that I just want to touch on. One is to just kind of review what we're doing here today. We're getting very close to having our final hearing, which will be our opportunity to get all the final comments from the public and from us as we do the... very significant work of your team to tweak it out and have a good balanced budget to send to the mayor. So hopefully we've already There's no new ideas that are going to be coming out of the woodwork at this hearing. But there's two really important components that I heard. One is the cable car, which has already generated quite a bit of discussion. And I look forward to that conversation. And then we, as you pointed out, CFO Mehorter, we were not at the last hearing in alignment regarding our use of the reserves, the fund balance, and flexing capital funds. can take our time and really discuss that today so that we can get all of the ideas out on the table and hopefully come into more alignment so that the staff will be able to move forward with a strong understanding of what we'd like to see in the next iteration of the budget. And one thing that I just reflected on other comments that I made at previous hearings, I bemoaned the choices that were before us. Using the reserve in particular is something that I've always felt very... It's not something that I love. I don't love that we're in that position. But I do want to acknowledge that the budget that's being presented to us does not include any service reductions. And I feel the fair increase topic, I thought that the Clipper differential was the primary thing, and obviously the cable car, but did I miss the 310, increase the fare to 310? Did I miss that?

The cash fare, oh, the indexing in the second year only was presented as part of our original fare structures in January, or December, excuse me.

OK. So that's the indexing component.

What we have been presenting is rather than doing indexing in year one, which would be typically the board's approach, that we eliminate the Clipper differential, which then gets everybody paying the same amount and doesn't discourage indexing. credit card or cash or whatever is the most convenient form of payment for folks. And then in the second year, we would return to indexing, which is how we go from the $3 to the $3.10.

Right, and having participated in two budget cycles, that openness to indexing has been something we have previously discussed, and I just wanted to make sure I was clear on that. I guess that's everything I just wanted to make sure to touch on before I open it up. And Director Felder, your name is first. So let's call on you. Let's call on you.

Just to speak to the approach relative to the reserve and the fund balance, I appreciate the way you've approached that. I think it's appropriate and smart. I will say that saving the use of the fund balance to the second fiscal year, I think, also makes sense. And it gives us an opportunity. And then I'll speak to this next. to reserve the degree to which we rely on the fund balance, which I think we can achieve by increasing revenue. And if we can increase revenue by a few million dollars, which I think we can do through a revised approach on the cable car fare, then our reliance on that fund balance goes down and we maintain larger funds in the most flexible category, which I think is important given what we face. So then that brings me to the cable car, and I will say that I do feel very strongly about this. That probably will be quite clear. But I'm not thrilled with the recommendation that's been made for a couple of reasons. One, it doesn't go as far as I think we need to go in terms of revenue generation. I think it also doesn't simplify things as much as we should simplify things. I think it's important that as we look at this, we meet as many of the objectives that we set forward as possible. In terms of simplification, I think going to the single fare, the cable car plus fare, makes a lot of sense. I think if we're doing that, we should do it in a way that gets us closer to full fare recovery. While I respect the notion that there could be some issue of demand that's diminished if we go too far, I just don't think we're going too far even at the $18 rate. I think if you look at the value of what we're delivering, I think it is extreme. I think it is one of the most compelling opportunities that people who visit San Francisco have to experience our city in a really wonderful way. And if we compare it to other things that they're spending on in San Francisco, I think that that $18 rate, when you also factor in the reality that you're getting free transit across the system for the rest of the day, I think is quite affordable and quite reasonable. And I think it's reasonable if we compare it to other attractions around the world. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I do think that it's worth being very thoughtful about how we treat youth and family. And I think when we talk about our visitors, I think we want to be thinking in terms of being affordable to a family. If we maintain the two free youth per $18 fare, I think you can look at a family of four with two children, and they will then end up paying at $36 the same rate per person as the current cable car fare. So I think that's extremely reasonable. And for that reason, I would very strongly urge us to just go with the $18 cable car plus fare, inclusive of the two youth. It generates a few million dollars a year more in incremental revenue, which is essential. And I think it sort of checks all the boxes for us. So that's my feedback.

Thank you. Thank you. Director Hemminger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think I'm tracking a couple of the same issues as Director Felder, so let me just pile on a little bit. I want to first start by thanking Bri, you, and your staff for many iterations of the same budget. And I'm somewhat surprised by the paucity of public involvement here today. I don't know whether you've worn them out. Or more likely, I think they're sort of keeping their powder dry. Because this budget is going to be a two-act drama And the first act is us and the Board of Supervisors approving it. The second act is what the voters have to say about it, which could totally tear up the first act. So I'll prefer to think of it that way, because I know our skills at engaging the public are legion. And I also know that I don't want to ask for more long meetings. So that's that. I also have to start with a little venting. And this is not directed at our organization, but at people who influence it. And what you heard from BRII is the fact that they've put together efficiencies that total $30 million in FY27 and another $30 million in FY28. And that's been the work of many oars on the boat. And then the controller comes along and says, oops, the healthcare costs aren't high enough. And so he piles on $40 million and $60 million in FY27 and 28 in additional labor expense. And it's just so deflating. And I'm sure I'm not telling you anything that we work like dogs to come up with some efficiencies and revenue. And another city department comes up with an estimate, which I have no reason to doubt, but which takes all the effort out of what we've done. Now, another way of looking at it is, if we hadn't identified those efficiencies, we'd be in even bigger trouble. And that's true. But we are still, as you said, Bree, and I've heard you use 4% and 2%. for revenue and cost. And it makes my point better. So I'll keep using that. We just can't go on like this. And especially if we are successful, if the folks out there doing ballot measures are successful, We will have secured a huge victory from Bay Area residents and then be told, nope, we just came up short again because our revenue doesn't match our expenditure. So I just find that very dispiriting. Let me add one more example that's in the very presentation we have before us today, and that's the state. You know, the state sort of put us through the coals, I guess, to give us this loan that we were asking for, and now that we've got it, the state is giving us an estimate of state transit assistance That is way too low. And when Gray Davis was governor, as I recall, he just stopped using only a revenue basis to calculate this number. He just said, I want $100 million. And they put $100 million in the budget. And they made up the difference with general fund money. We've got to find some way to avoid this swinging around of those numbers, and especially, as Bree points out, where the numbers are completely counterproductive because we don't want people driving more, but we rely on them driving more to generate this revenue source. And next to last subject, cable cars. I clearly understand Director Felder's passion for this subject. And I suspect that he's right, that for the most part, people would pay what this costs, sort of like that movie about baseball, Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. I also agree with him that simplifying is the watchword here. And I don't think the last thing Clipper needs is a whole bunch more code they have to write for another brilliant idea on fare collection. So I do think simplification makes sense. I do worry a bit about how high we go. And people don't look at numbers just as numbers. And in this case, it would be doubling from 9 to 18. And I think that may strike some people as a little bit of gouging. So I wouldn't rule out future increases or an indexing scheme. But I think all at once, a doubling of the fare is pretty tough. And then finally, Bree, I wanted to talk to you a little bit. And maybe if we can get slide 15 up on the screen. This is about the question of the fund balance and the reserve. And what I heard you say, Bree, is that you were looking to preserve the fund balance as long as possible because it's the most flexible one you've got. And I think that's a very good insight. But my question is, if that's true, how far could we push that? How much more could we get for the fund balance if we reduce the agency reserve? And would that make sense?

As currently projected, including all of the sources that we would use in the budget, I'm looking at about $40 to $60 million of fund balance. We would be starting the next year with about $40 to $60 million in fund balance.

So we don't have to pay for that? In what sense? With reducing the reserve?

The reserve is based on 10% of the value of the operating budget.

Right. But my question, can we get the image back up? My question is, the $74 million in reserve, we could push that higher. My question is, if we push that higher, could we free up more funding? Oh, yes.

I'm sorry. I misunderstood your question. Yes. Yes.

Do you have a number in mind that would be, you'd be comfortable with?

You know, I think to the point that the board members have made at past meetings, the more that we use the reserve, the more we have to pay back. So there's a little bit of tension. Like any difficult policy choice, there's pros and there's cons. The pro of using the reserve is that we retain our most flexible source. The con is that we have to pay it back, which is a little bit kicking the can down the road, right? You're sort of like keeping flexibility today, but reducing flexibility in the long term because you're going to have to, at some point, use likely fund balance to repay the reserve. On the flip side, using the fund balance is, the pro of it is, because it is so flexible, it's very easy to use. So it's sort of like any hard policy choice. Which pros do you like the most? And which cons can you most live with?

DAVID SANGER- Well, maybe you could just help explain your thinking a little bit more. You've got, as you pointed out, I think, about 50% of the reserve in play. And did you start the exercise with that 50% and then just work your way around the rest of the fund sources to make it balance?

I'm going to let you answer that specific question. But I think my understanding of the process is Bree worked hard to not zero out the fund balance, because at a budget of our scale, she doesn't want to have to come back to you to release the reserve. every time we hit a bump in the road so we were trying to allocate some of the fund balance because it is truly you know the source with the least strings attached but hold back a little bit so that if something unexpected happens in the next year we we have a little bit of room to maneuver so I could be wrong, Bree, but my understanding is your thinking kind of started with the fund balance and then worked backwards to the reserve.

Again, I'm here mainly to give you an opportunity to rebalance these two numbers if you think that makes sense. If it doesn't, we can stick with what you got. I don't have a particular view, but if you're looking to preserve your most flexible fund source, that would argue to me that you take the 32 and go higher and take the 74 and adjust accordingly.

I think that I was really trying to respond to a variety of concerns. One of the other concerns or interests that I heard from the board was in a balanced approach where we use some of both. And I think.

And I think that makes sense. That makes sense.

And so kind of beginning from the idea that we should use some of both, and then my own preference for, and Director Kirschbaum's and the rest of the executive team's preference for reserving our most flexible funds, and then kind of layered on with simplicity, I will note that from an extremely boring and technical perspective, getting a loan from the state and using the agency's reserve for the first time from a technical budget perspective and my interactions with AOSD, which is the city's accounting mother. And we're all sort of like the children of AOSD. And working that through with how our transactions impact the city's transactions which impact the city's financial statements. I was trying to keep it simple so that we were using... I was trying to use one fund source in one year and then the other fund source in the second year. Now, I certainly could, for example, if you wanted to split the baby and have it be... We're solving a $100 million problem and you want to solve it 50-50, I could do... 50 of agency reserve and 20 of fund balance in year one and 50 of fund balance in year two. That would be an option as well. But I didn't do that option because it's just a little bit more technically complex when we're doing two new technical things for the first time. But I think this is really a policy question for the board. And I've presented what I believe is the best financial choice for the agency. But that's why you sit in the seats that you do to provide fresh eyes from the outside and represent the constituencies that you are appointed to represent. You know, it's my job to take that feedback into account.

OK. Well, look, on this subject, for me, that's good enough. So let's stick there. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Director Hinze.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We're all doing the same few topics here, so we're all biting for the same apple. I'll say that it did strike me the way that we were using one fund source in your one solely and a different fund source in year two solely so I didn't just want to put out there the idea of as they called it splitting the maybe but I think the technical aspects if it all comes down in a wash in the end I think the technical aspects of doing it this way according to Brie we believe and we trust our staff that it's easier kind of technically to do it this way but I did put out there the idea of splitting the meeting just in case my colleagues were so inclined but I knew appreciate the funding sources and appreciate the formulas you kind of work through. And so just to double down on the right and heaviest question, do you believe that the amount of fund balance is the highest you're comfortable going at the moment?

Since I've been here, the fund balance has ranged between I would say my preference is to keep it in the $40 to $60 million range. I start to feel a little nervous at $40. $60 is a little bit more comfortable.

OK, so you wouldn't want to use any more of it because you want to keep some. You want to keep some. quote unquote, reserve for other, yeah.

Yeah, because it's our most flexible source and these are uncertain times, it's helpful to have that flexibility.

OK. And then on cable car, I do. I agree with Dr. Pucker's passion for the topic and I do think that Himmelkarr could be a source of revenue down the road and it is somewhat untapped. But largely at this moment I agree with Director Hemminger that we also going from 9 to 18 seems a little too much at this point and I was one of the board members and I was worried about the elasticity of demand and hoping that tourists would always use our, you know, the historic nature of our product and the sort of the like the must-see nature of cable cars would make the demand inelastic and I think the staff's recommendation to the staff's recommendation I suppose in addition to coming back to us at the end of year one of the budget cycle I think for me if I don't see any like noticeable drop off in demand and ridership for the cable car at the end of year one once we have some data. I would be comfortable then pushing it in year two of the budget to something closer to cost recovery and closer to a number that Director Felder was throwing out. Since we're talking about technical aspects of like entering the budget in, would that be doable in the system if we wanted to change the cable car for year two?

I think what I would do in that, before I do, I just want to clarify one point, and that is what we're proposing is the option where I can definitely see your points, Director Hemminger and Hinzey, that going from 9 to 18, doubling is a big jump. But I just want to remind you that there would still be a $12 single ride available, and that goes from 9 to 12. So going from 9 to 18 includes the two youth free and includes four. free muni, so it's not an apples to apples comparison because you're getting a lot more things when you buy the cable car plus. That being said, I see that the jump from 9 to 18 is large. But in answer to your specific question, what we could potentially do is we do have to identify the fares in the budget. So one concept is you have to be clear about what you're doing when you pass the budget. So I would have to identify what the proposed fairs are now. But I think there's also an idea that the director has the ability to do emergency fairs as trial runs. And also there's a budgeting concept of, you're able to budget at the higher level. And if you do something less than that, then the board is approving a maximum amount. And so anything less than that is OK. But I'd have to talk through that with the city attorney. But I think my thinking would be that we could do a price in year one that's something lower than 18. And then in year two, bring it up to 18. And then we would still have that trigger with the board, the trigger that I mentioned where we come back and talk to you about the levels of ridership. and how ridership has changed as price has changed. My only note there would be that if we did something like that, it would result in a loss of revenue. And at this point in the budget cycle would mean that I'd be using either a little bit more fund balance or a little bit more reserve to make up that difference. But of course, the difference is certainly something probably around half a million dollars.

Okay. So you think it is technically possible? When I say technically, I mean literally the definition of the word technically. Yes, yes. I do believe. You think it is literally technically possible?

I would want to run it by the city attorney, but I do believe that that is technically possible.

Yeah. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. That's it for me for now.

Thank you. Director Chen? Oh, sorry. Director Kirschbaum, did you?

Well, I just want to help kind of stitch some of these conversations together to maybe inform some of the remaining board comments, because it would very much help us to leave here today with some consensus around cable car. So the... The reason we added back in the single fare but priced it higher was to kind of, I think, speak to both Director Hinze and Director Felder's feedback, which is It's a big jump to go straight to $18, and our goal over time is to simplify. So we do think that the $12 may be a stepping stone that in future budget cycles we could just have the one price, but this would give us a transition period, and we intentionally priced it so that the cable car plus pass is a much better deal, which also allows us to see if people kind of organically transition to that simplification. So that is something that we'd like to get a little feedback on is, having the $12, getting at that kind of core anxiety some of you are expressing about going to the higher pass price? Or are we just overly complicating and kind of steering too far from our kind of original goals? of the simplification. And then the second thing, which is the newest, is we do want some feedback on the youth option. I will be transparent that it does add complexity for our operators. And so if the board doesn't really see a compelling advantage to it, we would like to hear that. But if it does, we think that we can work with operators on de-escalation strategies to kind of bridge that complexity. And then as the conversation we were just having, the overall dollar amount is kind of the third piece. And I like what Bri is sharing about possibly giving ourselves some room to learn if that is something that we think meets all of our approval obligations. we can run that specific issue down before we bring this back to you on April 7th.

Thank you. Director Chen.

To process some of that now. Thank you, Director Krishnam. I guess to the easier one, to Director Hemminger's slide 15, the sources, I think We haven't touched the reserves. We haven't done a state loan. This is all new territory. It doesn't make any sense to cut the budget only for us to go back to the budget, only for us to hopefully, if the revenue measures come back, to then have to rehire everybody and bring everything back. So I think this is fine. In your discussion with Dr. Hemminger, I think clarified a couple things. So some of it is these are three different buckets of money with slightly different ways of accessing. But I think the way we sequence it is fine. I don't think there's a, I don't see necessarily like a, as long as, as Director Hinzey said, the fund balance that we will be working with in fiscal year 28 is a comfortable level that will let us, you know, go through our payables and expendables, then that sounds fine. I think we've gone through the efficiencies, the revenue trends. I think that's all well and good. Cable car, I think I echo Director Felder in saying that I would really want to push for simplicity. I feel like I feel like, especially for people new to this system, tourists who are coming in, there's just a lot of options that you might have to look at to say, do I want the one-day pass, the three-day pass, the seven-day pass? Do I get the day pass now? Do I get the cable car? the all-access. And I want to push back on this idea of, oh, people getting sticker shock, because most tourists are riding this for the first time. they don't have a prior baseline to have sticker shock from, if that makes any sense. And so I guess my question to you is, the current budget that bakes in the option two, the $12 single ride plus the $18 cable car plus, $18 all access with 2U3. And so that's the current assumption in the budget. And then in the discussion with Director Kirschbaum, it sounds like there are ways to change the numbers sort of midway through the two-year budget, but that sort of depends the city attorney's decision or some of the guardrails.

You have to be clear at the time of the budget what your intention is. I would want to talk through with the city attorney what our ability is to pivot. But I do note that we do have the option of an experimental fair that the executive director does have the option for. Something else you could consider if you're thinking about simplification would be our fare offerings can vary. So you could have both options in year two and then have the single ride cable car ticket sunset and have only the cable car plus remaining in year two. So rather than going straight to cable car plus in one year, which felt like a lot, you could have the two options in year one and then go down a cable car plus only in year two. So I think the reason that you do a two-year budget is to be able to phase things in, be thoughtful about how you phase things in over time and not make too many big jumps. So that's something else that you could think about in setting your fare policy.

Got it. I thought you were about to say something. So I think my preference is I think we want to get to a place of simplicity. the staff proposal is, I think, about the same amount of, is less complexity, I think, than what we have today with the one, three, and seven day.

Yes, yes, yes.

So, and I think no matter what, given how much time I think we spent At the board talking about this, I think the board would be very interested to see, even if the ridership, I think you had mentioned some idea of a guardrail of coming back to the board if we do see that actually tourists are very sensitive to price and we want to come back here. But I think even if that is not true, or I think the board would be very interested just to see what the numbers come out. I think my preference would be one fair type I think that the proposal is actually considering factoring in two adults, two kids, two adults or two plus kids situations, and also people who want to ride the cable car more than once. People might be getting a better deal than in the current situation, that it's I think it's fine. And also recognizing that I think our tourism industry is also in a somewhat slowly recovering state. So I have my druthers. I know that there's other considerations as well. But I would eventually like to be one fair type. There's one choice. There's one option. And we just make it simple for everyone who's visiting the city. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Vice Chair Kahina.

Thank you, Chair. Preet, thank you and the team, as always, for all the incredible hard work that the finance team and everyone that supports the finance team in getting these numbers to us. I know it's not an easy task to take seven voices, try to put them together, and try to present something that's cohesive and digestible and something that we can react to. So just huge appreciation to you and the team. Let's see which one I want to start with. I think as it pertains to, well, I did have questions about just like the state of affairs right now in this moment. You know, we're seeing that fuel costs are just increasing and that the world's a little bit wonky right now. I want to understand from your perspective how you took that into account as you guys were doing the numbers. These are recent events. I imagine all the months of work that your team put together had to just, that flipped it over its head a little bit. So as we're looking at projections, as we're looking at just the cost of doing business, how are you factoring those things in as we look ahead?

You know, I think there's so much change in the world that there's oftentimes a change over here is offset by a change over there. And there does have to be a point where you have kind of pencils down. Because if you continually change your assumptions Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, as the world changes, you'll just sort of never get to the end. And in a budget that's this large, Some good things happen. And some bad things happen. To Director Hemminger's point, we work really hard to find efficiencies. And then we found out that the state grants was a loss to the point that you just made. The bad news about rising fuel costs is it's going to make fuel more expensive for me. But the good news is it makes fuel more expensive from everyone else. And so I get more sales tax. So there's always sort of a get one, give one. And we try to budget. just generally conservatively so that we're able to absorb change, whether it comes from the international, federal, state, or local level. And that's kind of the magic. It's like being Goldilocks. I want to be a little bit conservative, and project tightly. But if I'm too conservative, then we're going to run out of money. So I do feel like we've really been watching the world change around us and being thoughtful, incorporating thoughtfulness into our budget without making wild swings one way or the other. And that's kind of the magic in the whole thing.

Yeah, and I hope part of the positive too is that folks are more open to use public transit and perhaps rely on that a little bit more. That could also happen.

That would also be a good outcome.

We're ready to absorb all those new customers or more frequent customers. As it pertains to the loan, thank you so much for breaking that down for us and helping us understand the pros and the cons and some of the cons of that particular resource. I think that from our last board workshop, that was still hanging out there as we just need to know those specific details. And I appreciate what the CAC mentioned as well in terms of trying not to rely too much on those dollars because the repayment is so hefty. So I do want to raise that up as a concern that I also share. Cable car. Can you give us a sense? And thank you so much for reaching out to the hospitality community and those stakeholders in particular. Can you give us a sense of what comments or concerns rose to the top for those folks when you all presented these options to them or spoke about increasing the cable car fare?

I think that a lot of the concerns that they had, you have mirrored as well. On one hand, they loved the idea of simplification. On the other hand, they felt like it was a big jump in one year. I think they also brought up the point that a salad is $18 in San Francisco. So if you come here, the cost of a cable car ticket is just the cost of a salad. But their frame on it was slightly different. Their frame was more, if you've already spent $18 on, a salad, then you're like, oh my god, another $18 for a cable car ticket? People are quoting the same $18 salad, but with a slightly different frame on it. But I do think that the proposals that we've presented really try to balance. You can't both have flexibility. and simplicity. Those two things are inversely related. So we've tried to make it as simple as we can by narrowing down to two options, but having a little flexibility with having two options. And so really, the proposal, the fare that we're ultimately recommending is really our kind of like Goldilocks solution of, The person who wanted really cold porridge has to eat it kind of room temp. And the person who wanted it piping hot also has to kind of eat it room temp. And so everyone is getting the same porridge. So we have tried to be responsive to everything that we heard.

And right now, so I'm just looking at our website right now, and it seems like there are three, I guess, different fairs for folks. There's a single right at $9, senior disabled Medicare from 9 PM to 7 AM, it's very specific, at 4 o'clock. And youth under four, four and under, are free. And in our website, it speaks to any sort of discounts. Those are offered in terminal kiosks, and it directs folks to go there to receive those particular discounts. And so with what you're proposing right now, would the guidance to folks that want to get that 18 plus two free passes, would it be to go to the terminal kiosks to purchase those tickets? Or is that something they could purchase on the cable car itself?

I think that's something we would want to be nonspecific about right now because we haven't had the cubic discussion. We do see a lot of benefit to being able to purchase this on board from the conductors, but we are not going to be able to run that down within this budget period.

I would say that I would still want to retain some option for senior disabled and Medicare writers and would challenge the staff to figure out a way to still incorporate that piece. It sounds like there are some logistical or operational pieces that make that challenging right now. But maybe you could speak a little bit more to those challenges.

Diana?

Yes.

Thank you. Diana Hammonds, Director of Revenue Development. Specifically to the Medicare and senior fare that you see on that, that is very specific. It's actually an FTA rule that we provide off-peak. half-price fares, and so that is our off-peak hours for cable car. We don't offer any other discounts, as you know, at any other time for any other groups. And so that wouldn't be changing for that off-peak period.

Would it still remain at $4 in the new pricing proposal, or the fare proposal that's being proposed today?

It would be half of whatever fare is decided on. Oh, so it becomes half. But again, it's only from 9 PM until 7 AM the next day.

So with the two proposals, or with the actually series of proposals that we have right now, there's a $12 single ride and an $18 single ride with kids. Would it be half of the $18 or half of the $12?

It would be half of the single ride ticket if we maintained to, yes.

So it would be $6, so just a $2 increment. That's helpful to know. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Well, before I get to that, just clarifying question. For locals that do have Clipper, the card, and perhaps they don't have a monthly pass, but they do have a Clipper card, What would their fair be under these different models?

They could choose between the two options, the 12 and the 18.

Okay. And so the only way they could bypass that is if they get a monthly Clipper. I see. Okay. So we're trying to hopefully incentivize folks. Got it. Okay. That's helpful. I do... I think in this one I am a little bit more aligned with Director Felder. I'm trying to maximize our recovery of cost as much as possible with this one. That said, just understanding the impact that this would have on seniors and folks with Medicare that, you know, we just recently found out. I do, I am supportive of staff's recommendation of a $12 single ride and 18. dollar cable card plus youth, plus two youth. I think that that would seem appropriate right now. But I'm also, honestly, I'm not completely opposed to the idea of if there is consensus amongst the group to really advocate for that 18 and two free youth, like I'm perfectly fine with that too. just understanding what this would do for the most vulnerable amongst us. I just want to make sure that the increase for them is not going to be that significant. Thank you.

Thank you. Director Felder.

Thank you. I just want to get us to a point where we're providing sort of clear, I don't want to say direction, but where we have some alignment and consensus that we're providing so that you guys can work with that. And so to that end, I guess the one thing that I have heard and one idea that came out of this that might be interesting is the idea, if we all could feel good about this is that we maintain a single-ride fare. I would hope that maybe we could increase it a little bit so that we get it closer to the Cable Car Plus fare. But we do that with the idea that we would sunset it after a year so that we would then really be moving in the direction of simplification. that under that scenario, maybe we would consider even going from 12 to 15 with the single-ride fare. That would, you know, if you look at some of the discount dynamics, it would increase that a little bit, but it would still in that first year give you that sensitivity. But, again, it would put us, you know, in two years at a point where we would consolidate with that single fare that would be at the higher rate. I'm really not that concerned about the comparison to the current fare, because I think, as was stated by Commissioner Chen or by Director Chen, The public just isn't that aware of that. Certainly not the majority of the people who are buying cable car passes. So if we did something along those lines, is that something that we could all feel reasonably good about? I mean, this is sort of something to discuss, I guess, just in the interest of getting to some level of consensus.

Sorry, just to just add another layer to this of where I think there is some consensus, too. I think there is a feeling amongst board members that there is a wait and see. We want to be able to come back to this decision at some point. Director Heminger mentioned indexing. Director Hinze talked about let's increase it one year and then come back to it. Director Felder just mentioned what he's mentioned. This idea of like we want to be able to do something react to this in a year's time and so curious from your perspective Brie like what what makes sense based on the many discussions you've had with all the folks in hospitality What you've had amongst the team and leadership like what if there is this we want to understand how to reevaluate this within a year and what kind of dynamic works for you to make it as simple as possible. Because any sort of increase, I imagine, would entail another round of stakeholder conversations, another round of just leadership also rethinking this again.

I think I might need to meditate upon it and come back to you.

Thank you. Director Hemminger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In the interest of trying to locate consensus, if we can find it, I was thinking about an idea that if we've got in the current proposal a $12 single ride, what if we just bump that up in successive budgets? So 12, and then 15, and then 18. And you could get to 18 in the third year if you can handle that. You could go faster, too. But I do worry about the plus idea. We've got so many damn pass combinations in the Bay Area. It's a wonder people get on the bus to start with. So I would just try to leave those all to the side and just say, look, the way you ride the cable cars, it's a single ride. And that's going to capture the vast majority, I would think, of the market because they're going to ride it once. They're not going to ride it again. The kids like my kids will write it again, but not everybody. So that'd be my grist for the mill. 12 in the first year, 15 in the second, 18 in the third.

I don't want to overstate the past, and I do agree that we have a lot of different kind of regional configurations, but we were trying to solve for the fact that we want people to be able to get back easily whether they choose to take the cable car or they hop on the historic or you know that they later that day you know ride out to to Sunset Dunes so we were trying to solve a couple challenges there one of which was just the complexity of going from Powell to Hyde and then having to figure out how to get back

I'd like to just weigh in here. I am certainly much more aligned with what Director Felder is talking about. And in respect to what your proposal is, Director Hemminger, it just doesn't sound like a very good deal. You're paying $18 to get one place, and then you're stranded. And I do believe that the simplification to $18 all-day pass on all of our modes with free youth is an excellent deal. I mean, you could be with two parents with two children and two of their friends for $36 and you have an all-day adventure in San Francisco, I think that that is something that can be marketed and could grow our ridership. And I believe that that's some of the feedback that we received from the stakeholders that that was a deal that could be successfully marketed. And I would agree with that. The single ride doesn't feel like a great deal at $12, $15, or $18 to me. It feels like something that's a fun thing to do one time, but you're left with the problem of how do you get back without spending $24 when we're proposing an $18 charge. I am... curious on the single ride if that's a, you know, are sales of single ride, are riders mostly single riders or are they monthly pass riders or do we know? It's about half and half. About half and half.

But that's with a significantly more complicated fare structure. So I wouldn't necessarily want to assume that that's the underlying preference.

So my personal, just to put it out there, I thought the idea that surfaced to sunset the single ride in year two sounded appealing to me. I feel like that addresses the concern of there being too great of a leap, but also gets us where we want to go in terms of simplification. And it will also give us a year of seeing what the trend is. If the single ride remains popular, which I would guess it would not, we'd have the option to keep it. I mean, we wouldn't want to throw out something that's selling well. But I Yeah, I do. Just as a merchant, I feel like there's something there in the past with the free youth that's just fun and marketable. And I want to see if we can really, with our partners on the tourism side, make that into something that could help us grow ridership. bring us closer to recovering the fare. I believe that if we have more riders, our cost per ride will go down. So it's potential that we could get to a break even, possibly. So that's my personal feeling. I have thoughts about the use of the fund balance and the reserves as well. But we were very deep in the cable car conversation. And I feel like maybe we're getting close to alignment. Vice Chair Kahine, you had some thoughts.

I was mostly throwing it back to Julie. And at this point, I think we've provided a lot of feedback on this. I just want to see if this is enough for you all, or do you need us to reach pure consensus on this?

So processing everything that you all are saying and consulting with my technical expert, I think the preferred option that seems technically feasible and responsive to what you've all have said would be the option of keeping the $18 cable car plus STARTING WITH WHAT STAFF HAVE PROPOSED IN YEAR ONE AND THEN IN YEAR TWO GIVING YOU THE OPTION TO REMOVE THE $12 SINGLE RIDE BUT WITH THE PROMISE OR THE CAVEAT THAT WE WOULD RETURN WITH YOU FOR DATA TO MAKE THAT DECISION AND THEN I WOULD WANT TO CONSULT WITH THE CITY ATTORNEY TO MAKE SURE THAT WE STRUCTURE THAT IN A WAY THAT MEETS OUR TITLE VI our charter fair rules, all of those things. So I would need to run that down with the city attorney to see if that's possible.

Right. And I do want to echo the point that Chair Tala made, which I think is an excellent one. This is an amazing opportunity to build positive relationships with folks in the hospitality industry and to try to figure out ways to, as we're marketing this and as we're creating an awareness around this, the excitement that perhaps folks will feel understanding that two of their kids are the kids' friends or any iteration of somebody 18 or younger will get a free ride. I just want to make sure that we have a marketing plan that's accompanying any sort of strategy that we have here and that we're working deeply with our hospitality partners to be able to make this as easy as possible for folks visiting San Francisco to access this resource and this hopefully fun adventure for them and their families. But I just see this as a really great partnership that we could have if we do it right. So we'll definitely encourage the team to figure that part out and put a good amount of energy and working with our partners in hospitality.

Director Hinze?

Pardon me. Director told me, what was your thoughts? Sorry, I had to step away when you were talking. What was your latest thought? The latest thought.

The latest thought that I expressed was perhaps to move towards sunsetting the staff proposal with the idea that we would sunset it, the single ride fare after a year and move exclusively towards the $18 FAIR THAT INCLUDED THE TWO YOUTH OPTIONS. I ALSO EXPRESSED THAT UNDER THAT SCENARIO, I MIGHT SUGGEST THAT WE LOOK AT A SLIGHTLY HIGHER SINGLE RIDE FAIR JUST TO MOVE US A LITTLE MORE IN THE DIRECTION THAT WE'RE TRYING TO GO.

IN YEAR ONE, IN THIS BUDGET, A SLIGHTLY HIGHER SINGLE RIDE?

YEAH.

OKAY. I guess just to put my last thoughts on this that I'll say is I was, I like that idea of possibly sunsetting the 12, the single ride fare, but I would need data because I think as Chair Tarloff said, I think the $18 cable car plus is a good deal. I was, I was more hesitant on the price of the Cable Car Plus still getting higher than $18 in this current year one, if we would call it trial period. And then at the end of year one, I would be maybe even open to increasing that $18 fee for the Cable Car Plus. I do think that idea is another area of exploration. The idea of sunsetting the fair is another area of exploration for us that staff can come back with after year one. And then the possibility of speaking to Director Feldman's earlier point on this, The idea of raising the price for the cable car plus at the end of year one would often be something that staff could come back. Keeping the price flexible for the cable car plus in year two is something that staff could also come back to us with a recommendation for.

I think my only hesitation there is that I believe that we would have to authorize a higher not to exceed amount in order to give the board the option to set the price lower. But again, I would want to work with the city attorney to make sure that that conforms to all the things.

I have a question regarding the FDA, FTA requirement that Vice Chair Kahina raised. And is the discounted fare only tied to, Actually, no, never mind. I'm not going to ask you. It's too complicated. Just to return to the current configuration of 50-50 single ride versus monthly pass. So as I just kind of digest that information, that seems to me like a very interesting trend, that there are a lot of San Francisco residents

I think to clarify what Brie meant was 50% are purchasing the single ride and 50% are purchasing some sort of tourism pass, the one day, the five day, or the seven day.

Very good. OK. So it's not the case that San Francisco residents who have a monthly pass are the other 50% of the riders?

CATHERINE KAPUTA- Correct. It is what Director Kirschbaum said, that of those who purchase a fare media to ride the cable car, half do the single ride and half do one of our more bespoke tourism passes.

Okay. So those already sell well. Okay. I feel like maybe we're homing in on some consensus, but Director Hemminger, your concern about, I think your concern is about the simplicity loss

Well, first of all, a question about the FastPass you can use on the cable car, right? And the FastPass isn't one of your two, four, five. So that's something else entirely.

That's the monthly pass, yes.

Right. That's quite a few people, isn't it? I mean, in part, I'm worried about them. And look, people get mad at you whenever you raise fares.

But the monthly pass, they would continue to ride free. And the monthly pass fare would only be impacted by the indexing in year two. So there would be no change for the monthly pass holders in year one?

WILLIAM H. My concern is speed, that we're going pretty fast and raising the fare pretty high. But in terms of reaching a consensus, I could certainly bow out, and we can move on to some other subject.

MARTHA MINOWSKI. How do you feel about the idea of sunsetting the single ride in year two rather than in year one?

I'm not sure how I think about that. It's intricate. We're putting a lot of guilt on Lily here. And that's one reason I like the single ride. But look, if the balance of the board wants to move in a different direction, that's fine with me.

Very good. We could leave it at that. I did want to, oh, Director Kirschbaum, did you have something?

Yeah, I just wanted to thank the board for this conversation. It's very helpful, and I think you've already worked a lot closer towards kind of a consensus or a near consensus recommendation. Because this issue is so important to our hospitality industry, I might recommend that you let us take this board discussion back, perhaps even arrange an opportunity for one or two of our board members to to get feedback directly from the stakeholders. And then April 7 would still be kind of a final opportunity for us to present you with a final recommendation. But first of all, you've really met our overall goal for this budget process, which is you've made almost all of the hard decisions moving into this discussion. So the fact that we are focusing on a very, I think, complicated and interesting final, very specialized fare question as it relates to the hospitality industry is A STRONG INDICATION THAT THIS HAS BEEN A SUCCESSFUL BUDGET PROCESS FROM MY PERSPECTIVE AND I JUST WANT TO THANK YOU FOR THAT AND THANK BREE AND HER TEAM ALSO FOR BRINGING HARD DECISIONS EARLY. BUT THAT WOULD BE MY RECOMMENDATION IS THAT WE We take what I'm hearing as kind of a working recommendation that the single fare be looked at like a transition tool. And then also that we have an opportunity to get more information from the hospitality industry on what they see as the most marketable aspects of the Cable Car Plus Pass because that was something that there was a lot of energy around during our discussions.

Thank you for that. And I did hear, CFO Mehorter, that you, or no, I heard that, you know, on April 7th, we could come back with maybe more fleshed out recommendation. And if I could ask, in addition, that you present it to us with the different sorts of riders, what their experience would be. You know, a tourist versus a monthly pass user versus a resident versus, you know, a family. The different scenarios I think would be really interesting. and might help us arrive at a better, at the best possible way forward. With regard to the use of one-time resources, I believe that's pretty well summarized on slide 15. I believe I heard from my colleagues that there's a general level of comfort with what's been presented to us today. I would echo several of my colleagues who appreciated the wisdom of dividing it between the two years using the agency reserve in the first year and the fund balance in the second year as the most flexible sources we adapt to changes, so I believe we're generally settled with that, which is, you know, just an interesting contrast to the very long discussion we just had about cable car, which is a tiny dollar figure compared to this, but I appreciate that it's the most iconic service we provide. No shade to the historic fleet.

Madam Chair, when I worked at MTC, we had a saying that the smaller the pot of money, the bigger the argument.

Okay.

So we're playing to type.

Very good. Maybe to conclude our conversation here, I'd love to just spend a few more minutes just talking about something we've touched on several times in this discussion. which is just the level of change that we are adapting to on a day-by-day basis. Slide 17 is a very good synopsis of our revenue sources between the two years of the budget. Of these revenue types, so general fund operating grants, parking, transit, other, state loan, regional sales tax, local regional sales tax, local parcel tax, the operating reserve, the fund balance, Of these, Siafo Mahorda, what would you say is the most subject to more change? SIAFO MAHORDA.

That's a good question. The regional sales tax and the local parcel tax for two reasons. One, they haven't been approved yet. So the binary between zero and what you see before you is quite large and depends on November. And then secondly, because these are untested revenues, The regional sales tax less so, because we already have a number of sales taxes that support transit, most recently Prop L. And the local parcel tax, this is the first time the agency's administering a parcel tax. We are standing up a whole new administrative function. We need to create the role. We need to administer the role. We need to notify all of the property owners in San Francisco that this is, if it passes, that it is a tax. what is the basis of their tax, what the amount of their tax will be. We need to have a structure to handle protests, which is part of any property tax. And we need to have a structure in place with the treasurer tax collector's office to make sure that this tax is included in the property tax bills that go out, that it's tracked properly, that the funds are transferred to the agency properly. And in one of my former roles as deputy director of the redevelopment agency administering We had to support administration of the role in the redevelopment areas, because that was the basis of our revenue. And it was no joke. Every time one parcel, if it's turned into an apartment building, suddenly becomes 300 parcels. And each of those parcels has to be tracked. entered into the role. It is a very large administrative lift. And we're doing it for the first time. So I think there is some uncertainty there for sure.

And the uncertainty you talked about in your presentation with regard to the state operating grants, I did appreciate and I feel like I understood what you were saying about how the, I think it was $25 million that we were anticipating that we're not going to be seeing. If these new revenue sources are realized, Since it's tied to revenue, we will recoup that loss in future years.

That is the hope, unless, of course, another transit agency comes up with a new $300 million revenue idea, then there will be no proportional change between us, right? Or if the revenue base itself which is composed of the sales tax on gas and diesel, if that goes down, the factors influencing it are multiple. And so I would say if all factors remain the same, and the only factor that changes is that the regional and local measure pass, then yes, we would see a reversion of that $25 million in revenue to us. But there are lots of other factors that go into that calculation.

OK. Well, thank you very much. It's very complex information explained fully and patiently. And each time we touch on it, I walk away with a better understanding of it. It starts to approach your understanding. So hopefully you've received all the feedback that you need to bring us the next iteration of the budget on April 7th. And I really appreciate you and your team for all the work that you are doing. So, with that, I will be asking Secretary Silva to call the next item, but just to note that I am going to be leaving the hearing now, and Vice Chair Kahina will continue in my stead. Secretary Silva, please call the next item.

Directors, that places you on item number 12, presentation and discussion regarding a muni service equity strategy update. And staff will be joining us remotely for this item. It'll likely just take a moment for her to get the deck up.

SPEAKER 1- Secretary Silva, I think we're going to take a bit of a break, if that's OK. Can we take a 10-minute break and get back here? Actually, a 9-minute, and get back here at 3.40? SPEAKER 2- 3.40.

Very good. SPEAKER 1- Thank you.

That's the Felder way. Okay.

Directors, we are ready to reconvene. I will reread the item before we get started. So it places us on item number 12, presentation and discussion regarding a muni service equity strategy update. Our staff today, Jessica Garcia, our service planning manager, is presenting this item virtually, though Lupita Ibarra, our chief transportation officer, is also here in person to support and answer any questions. Go ahead, Jessica.

Good afternoon, board of directors, and thank you for accommodating my remote presentation for today. My name is Jessica Garcia, and I'm the service planning manager in transit operations. And I gave a presentation in January on our overall beauty equity strategy program. But today I'm going to give you an overview on the update that will be on the agenda for approval at the April 7th board meeting. So this is part of our budget. PROCESS EVERY TWO YEARS WE PREPARE AN UPDATE TO BE APPROVED AS PART OF THE NEXT BUDGET CYCLE. SO TO GIVE A QUICK RECAP, THE EQUITY STRATEGY IS ROOTED IN THE EQUITY POLICY WHICH WAS ADOPTED BY OUR BOARD IN 2014. THE POLICY BUILDS ON OUR TITLE VI FTA requirements, and it provides guidance on the metrics, the methods, and the timing of our updates. It uses a neighborhood approach in addition to looking at citywide accessibility, which we devised with a working group back in 2014. And so these are the nine neighborhoods shown on the map that were chosen because of their concentration of affordable housing, low rate of access to private vehicles, concentration of people of color and people who live in low-income households. And for our citywide accessibility routes that we've selected, those are based on their high ridership of senior and people with disability populations. At the heart of the community equity policy and every strategy update that we've completed is that as has a goal that as we invest in the muni system and make budget decisions that these neighborhoods and the routes that we have identified as equity routes are benefiting just as much or more from investments than the rest of the city. And in times like we are now, the same principles also help guide us through difficult decisions so that these neighborhoods and routes do not have less quality of service than the rest of the system. 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 at the top. And you can see that there are a number of routes that overlap across the different neighborhoods and across the citywide accessibility routes as well. So the first equity strategy was adopted in 2016, which marks this year's update is 10 years of applying the equity strategy principles to our service planning work. And each report has had a focus that builds upon the previous one. It is tailored to what is happening at the agency at the time and also the current state of our budget. Over the years, we focused on putting the equity strategy principles into practice. And in the past two years, that focus has continued to be applying those principles in a cost neutral way in preparing for both service cuts and efficiencies. For the upcoming budget cycle, we will continue to apply those principles to our cost-neutral service planning, but also in the event the agency does receive resources to improve service, we will use the equity strategy principles to help us build out a process that helps us allocate and prioritize those resources based on our crowding and service needs. So, in this last budget cycle, any operational service improvements that we implemented were done cost-neutrally either by reallocating resources or finding creative ways to optimize our service and our schedules. Overall, we were able to implement operational improvements on 11 equity routes through adding additional trips to address our peak and school crowding especially. We also implemented a number of route and stop changes that improved operational reliability and accessibility. So even with our budget constraints on the operating side, we were able to accomplish improvements in the system. And then on the capital side, we really focused our transit priority projects on benefiting 17 equity routes through quick build projects and spot treatments that improve reliability and travel times on those routes. So these are some of the examples of those service improvements. So for example, we added additional PMP trips on the 29th sunset to address school crowding. We made route changes on the 48 Quintara to improve reliability of the route. We also added a stop on the 15 Hunters Point Express at Union Square to improve transfers to and from the T line for riders that are heading further south. And we implemented a quick build project on the M Ocean View that installed safe boarding islands with improved lighting, which this project really significantly improved safety at stops on this route. In the final report that you'll see at the next meeting, you'll see more of the improvements that we've implemented across all the different equity routes. As part of the update, we also do a data analysis of our equity routes. For the analysis, we look at different service metrics at the route level, but we also look at how the performance of equity routes compared to non-equity routes as an indicator of how well we are prioritizing the service for equity routes in the system. And to do this comparison, we evaluate the routes by our defined service categories that are shown here on this slide. So that way we are comparing similar routes to each other and not, for example, a rapid route to a grid route. So the first metric that we review is service delivery by looking at the number of scheduled hours that are delivered. And one thing I wanted to note is that we used to also track service filled as part of this data metric, which refers to the number of runs or operator shifts that we were able to fill each service day. But thanks to the efforts from the last two to three years, we've done a much better job at matching our scheduled service to our operator resources, and it's no longer a metric we're needing to focus on. So instead, we are now just looking at the percent of scheduled hours delivered, which refers to all the service that went out, the door plus accounts for any unplanned service disruptions. For example, if we had any unplanned disruptions due to a special event or had mechanical issues or a passenger emergency. So that's what these numbers are showing after all of that is taken into account. So overall, our service delivered was similar between both equity and non-equity routes in these different service categories. The second metric that we look at is crowding. So we look at the trips over our crowding capacity and our crowding capacity is defined threshold for how many people can fit on a vehicle depending on its size. And we define a crowded trip as a trip where the passenger load meets our crowding threshold for at least 5% of the stops on that trip so that we can account for the duration of crowding. So this table here shows the average percent of trips overcapacity for each of these service categories for daytime service. And the goal is to have these numbers as close to zero as possible. But overall, the muni equity routes on average perform similar or better than non-equity routes in the same service category. And then the last metric for performance we evaluate is reliability on the routes. And in this case, we're looking at headway adherence for more frequent routes. And headway adherence measures how well spaced out the buses are based on the scheduled and planned frequencies instead of how well they stick to a time schedule. So on average for a weekday daytime service, equity routes in these service categories perform better or similar than the non-equity routes in the same category. So those are all the performance metrics that we evaluate in the equity strategy update. And then we also do a travel time and access analysis for each of the equity neighborhoods. This analysis builds on the equity toolkit that we worked on during COVID. And in the analysis, we look at how many jobs are accessible and also how many key destinations are within reach, such as grocery stores, community centers, medical facilities. parks, schools, libraries, and how far people can get within the muni network. So this slide shows that we are seeing what we're seeing for the Chinatown neighborhood and how far someone can travel on muni within 30 to 60 minutes and how many jobs and how many of those destinations they can get to. And then this one is showing the Bayview just to give a perspective of one of our outer neighborhoods in the city. And in the report itself, in the update, we'll have the same assessment for each of the neighborhoods. So the update will also provide additional updates on new initiatives and projects that we have underway to strengthen and advance the equity strategy work that we're doing at the agency. And one key goal that we identified in the last equity strategy update was to reconvene the Muni Equity Working Group. So the original Equity Working Group was vital in developing the Muni Equity Policy in 2014 and the first equity strategy in 2016. In February 2024, we held our first meeting with the new Equity Working Group and have been meeting at least bimonthly with them. The members represent organizations and stakeholders that either fall within one of the neighborhoods or transit-dependent populations that we've identified through the equity strategy to focus on. And to date, the group has served as a key sounding board as we navigated difficult service decisions such as those that happened last summer. And then moving forward into this next budget cycle, the primary focus will be on developing a new system-wide service evaluation process that builds on our equity strategy principles. And this is just to give more of a preview on what that work is doing. So the goal of the new system-wide service evaluation is that we're working in collaboration with the Muni Equity Working Group is to develop a more robust system-wide approach to identifying our service needs, be able to help us prioritize where service changes should be implemented, and also be able to measure service impacts from our service changes or proposed changes for our most transit-dependent customers. So over the next two years, we aim to standardize this and expand this framework that combines both performance and demographic data as part of our overall data-driven approach, including new demographic data that we're pulling in from the community onboard survey that is wrapping up. And shown here on the right is a preview of what the demographic analysis is that we're working on to build out the equity strategy principles and expand it to a more of a system-wide approach. So for looking into the next budget cycle, the next, what we're planning to do is we're planning to finalize the system-wide evaluation work with the Muni Equity Working Group. We're going to continue to monitor performance and crowding on our equity routes as we have been doing. And we're also going to look to find ways to make changes and make improvements as we can cost neutrally. And then in the event that we do get the parcel taxes approved in the fall, we'll use the equity strategy principles to develop those service proposals that we could implement and using the framework of the equity strategy to develop a process for that. So, as I mentioned, the full equity strategy, the full report and update will be up for approval at the April 7th board meeting. In between now and the fall, we'll continue to work to keep you all updated as we develop the system-wide service evaluation, as well as any possible service improvement, service plans that we may be developing in event that the parcel tax passes later this fall. So that concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much for your presentation, Jessica and Lupita. Thank you for standing by for any questions. We'll now open public comment for item 12 for two minutes.

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 members of the audience can come up to the podium at this time.

board, Dylan Fabris with San Francisco Transit Riders, and we're one of the members of the Muni Equity Working Group. So just want to thank staff for their work leading that working group and all the work they do behind the scenes. It's been a really great and I think valuable working group to get to hear perspective from more people across the city. And I think our comments and our experiences are really reflected there. We're in a tough time. I say sometimes that like Really, the only real way towards transportation equity is to put more resources into the transportation system. So with the current budget situation, it can be tough. But I would like to thank Jessica and her colleagues for helping to lead the working group and also doing the work on the system-wide service evaluation. I know that's a long time coming, but it does, I think, reflect the concerns, comments, and feedback from that working group. And I think it will be really helpful as we face service decisions moving forward. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Secretary Silva. Directors, any questions or comments on this item? Seeing none, I have some questions and I have some comments. So let me share those. Jessica, for page 12, what stood out to me in your presentation, this was the data review of travel time and access in the Bayview specifically. It might understand that the gray areas in that particular map if we could pull it up Folks in the Bayview have to travel more than than 60 minutes to access those areas of the city Yes, that's correct based off of this analysis that we did I And given this information, can you give us a sense of what the agency is doing to be responsive to this or to figure out a way to make those areas more accessible to folks at the Bayview? And I'm hoping that the Bayview shuttle is one of those tools that we're using.

So the analysis goes up to 60 minutes. And when we did, I mean, we could keep going into higher time bands. We did want to focus more on 60 since we thought that was the most reasonable travel time to expect for somebody. So the entire city is covered, I think, within 15 minutes more increment. I think in terms of things that we're looking to increase access, I think it's really going to be dependent on what resources we're going to have available in the next budget cycle. We have been looking at ways to improve connections for the Bayview, especially getting to the mission and to other areas of the city based off of feedback that we're hearing from customers. I know that the shuttle was very, very... was very well received by the community and is being used. At this time, the connection points that you could get to on that on the community shuttle is limited to the area of the Bayview. So mostly within trips, or it's mostly designed for trips within the neighborhood. And then also, I know that that project has added specific nodes, like getting to BART, for example, on the mission. So there's ways that we could work to look at the shuttle to see if there are other transfer points that could get people faster to the west side from the Bayview as well.

And I see Director Kirschbaum in the queue.

Yeah, I just want to build on Jessica's response, and I think the report covers this, but we have two efforts underway to improve travel time on our existing routes. One is the 29 Sunset Muni Forward project, and we are also working on some signal enhancements and other improvements to the T line. Both of those will, I think, also show a positive trajectory. The other thing is that, Jessica, correct me if I'm wrong, Because of the, I don't believe that this analysis assumes BART as a connection option, which I think is appropriate, because at the time of the analysis, we did not have the integrated fares. in the next cycle because it will be free to transfer from BART to Muni. It may be appropriate to include BART in the analysis or at least show how the travel time bands improve when we're able to consider BART, which is not something we've done in the past. Jessica, am I right that this analysis does not include BART as a transfer option?

Yes, that's correct. The analysis that we did for this report is just showing muni service exclusively.

I see.

Well, this is a really informative map and incredible data to really capture and understand how we need to adapt our service to serve all of San Franciscans. For the next report, Jessica would love to see this, if possible, if it's easy, this level of analysis for all the equity neighborhoods that are included here. If it's possible, see a compare and contrast from where we started and where we're at now. I think the agency has made a valiant attempt to address a lot of these equity issues. And it's important that we celebrate those things and we see the data, hopefully, that indicates all the different steps that we've taken to improve those gaps. I did have a question about the Bloomberg pilot project. I know I'm not sure if this is the right report to talk about that, but it seemed appropriate in terms of our equity neighborhoods and the particular community service that it analyzed. I know during the transit update, Brent mentioned that we were in the running for a grant, and I just wanted to see if there was an outcome from that process.

So two things. To your previous question, Jessica, can you confirm? My understanding is that you did do this travel time analysis for all the neighborhoods, and that's included in the report. And we were just showing two examples in the PowerPoint. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct. We'll have it for each neighborhood in the report. So yeah, just for the sake of the... of the presentation, which is pulled out to examples.

And then in future reports, we can look at how to track changes over time. I appreciate that feedback. Sadly, we did not get the grant to be final. We were not finalists for the customer experience work, which you know we were. using the same approach that the Muni service equity strategy uses, which is to focus the pilot on our equity neighborhoods. We are still trying to identify ways that we can achieve some of the goals of that grant in the coming two years, but we were not successful in the final round. That's a bummer.

That's a bummer. But I do want to celebrate the staff that did work on that particular project. I know it did yield a lot of good, valuable information and results that hopefully we can utilize. So as we collect data on equity efforts, they're only powerful and important if we act on them. And so I do hope that I know that the staff is quite innovative in thought. And I hope that they're taking the learnings from that particular pilot project and applying them into ways to improve the customer experience on the 14 and the 14R, respectively. Thank you, Julie, for that update. No additional comments from the team here. We're going to close this item. Secretary Silva, please call the next one.

Very good. Directors, that places you on item number 13, presentation and discussion regarding a streets division quarterly update.

All right. Vice Chair Kahina, directors, good afternoon. I'm Victoria Wise. I'm your streets director, and I'm really happy to be here today to give you our next quarterly update. Before I launch in, I just wanted to take a breath and acknowledge that it's been a very difficult several weeks for a number of folks who were affected by fatalities and some severe injuries, and we are absolutely grieving with the families that were affected by these tragedies. So with that, the agenda for today is I'm going to go over recent highlights and updates of what we've been up to in the last quarter. We're going to talk about some performance metrics, and I will give you a little bit of a look ahead of what's to come. I want to just take a minute to set the context for our work. I think it's important. I think you all know it, but also for members of the public that are watching, it's always good to come back to this, which is what we're showing here in the slide is alignment between the city's agenda and the work that the streets division is doing. Mayor Lurie has set very clear course for the city to improve the city performance and the quality of life for all San Franciscans. And our work is absolutely critical and essential for that in terms of building a safe, more accessible, and dare I say, more vibrant San Francisco. Our number one priority is safety and delivering critical system needs. As the mayor says, there is no public safety without traffic safety. And so on top of that, we're also very eager in doing everything we can to support economic revitalization by making it easier for people and for goods to get where they need to go. And we are doing our part to make the city work better by focusing on excellent customer service and responding to community needs. And I'll give some examples of that in the presentation. And we have better alignment also internally within our organization to streamline project delivery. And last but not least, and what we spend a lot of our time talking about today, is we're laser focused on delivering our work as effectively and as efficiently as possible and doing everything we can to support the agency's financial health, fiscal health. So let me give you a couple of highlights of what we've been up to. We hit a number of major milestones since our last report in October. The Clarendon quick build and the Bayview Community Pathway projects were approved by this board. We're also moving forward our paratransit and tow contract extensions. Thank you for your support on that. And just as importantly, revisiting the RFP that will be coming to you for approval in short order on both of those. to, again, focus on efficiencies and cost savings for the agency. And as you know, over the last 18 months of work on street safety, that culminated in all of you adopting the street safety initiative policy. We are coming up on 100 days of the mayoral announcement of that. And so I'll give you a little update at the end of our progress on that work. We also finished getting a lot of safety improvements in the ground. Our Lake Merced quick build, our Sloat quick build are complete. And we have a number of very busy, we've been very busy with Muni Forward as well. We just finished and cut the ribbon on a Fulton Transit safety project. And we also finished a number of phases on the T3rd signal upgrades that are focused on improving service reliability. By the way, the phase one evaluation showed anywhere from 15% to 37% improvement in travel times. And phase two is looking very promising for that as well. We opened up the M Ocean View stops at San Jose and Lakeview now with new, longer, and wider boarding islands. And on top of all these physical things that we've done, we are also publishing quite a few reports on our work. So we are going to publish the Safe Streets Evaluation Report. In fact, just did. And I'll talk about some of the findings of that report. It's an annual report evaluating our projects that we do. And we also just published the Safe Routes to School Program, giving folks an update of how we're doing with that program. And I just want to say, evaluation is a standard practice for everything we do, for whether it's physical projects or programs. We do take a look at them and see what we're doing right, what we can improve, and learn from that. While projects have been moving forward, our shops have also been busy installing the core safety treatments, what I call our bread and butter work. The numbers on the slide speak for themselves. And the teams that deliver these projects are doing so while also responding to unexpected city emergencies. You may recall this last quarter, kind of in my distant memory now, but was stressful when the PG&E power outage happened in the city. And when that happened, our traffic lights were out, and electricians went out with their trucks and powered signals with a generator from their trucks day and night, staying with that signal overnight just to make sure that it was operating safely. um speaking of around the clock work our paint shop spent night after night repainting more than 120 crosswalks downtown most of that work was completed before the super bowl delivering exactly what we committed to and as i mentioned earlier the mayor's priorities are economic revitalization and public safety. And this repainting of these crosswalks downtown is a great example how we're supporting both of those goals. Next slide, fun slide. So here is Justin Miller from our paint shop with one palette of thermostatic paint. Directors, just to make it fun, because it's a little bit late in the afternoon, how many pounds of paint do you think this is in one palette? Anybody ventures to guess? Don't be shy.

200.

Good guess. Go ahead and add a zero to that. So one pallet of these is 2,000 pounds of thermostatic paint. Three weeks, we have used 28 pallets like this on our streets to retouch and repaint everything. Normally, it takes us three months to go through that supply of paint. So I think it just speaks to the level of work that we're putting out there to make the streets safer and to have the city look beautiful as well. Not only did we get the streets looking their best ahead of the Super Bowl, we also ensured it all went without a hitch. And we had a very special guest visit to our PCO Operations Center. It was Mayor Lurie. You see him on the picture here. The mayor came to say thank you to our PCOs. And he got on the radio. So I have 200 PCOs out in the field. And he gets on the radio. We open up a channel for him. And he's, of course, thanking them. And they're like, is this a hoax? But it was not. It was truly the mayor, so they were very grateful to have him participate in that day and to express gratitude. But then very, very quickly, the commander in charge said, and I quote, okay, everybody, switch back to our regular channel. It's time to get back to work! The mayor was like, oh, I'm getting kicked off the channel. So mayor, no mayor, we have lots of work to do. Next, I want to talk about our safety work that is not just infrastructure. It's also about people, of course. And that's the focus of the Safe Routes to School program. We're working with kids. We're working with families, with caregivers to help build a culture of safe and sustainable travel choices. And this engagement and education program has multiple benefits for students. It helps them learn about different travel options and feel confident using them. And I have to say, it gives them autonomy. And this is something I feel is very important for our young people today. And by encouraging walking, biking, transit, students stay active, it reduces stress, and they show up to school ready to learn. There's many studies that support that active transportation to school actually supports learning, and it gives their kids independence and mental well-being. And this program supplements our infrastructure work that I just talked about. So marrying those two together is, I think, what is moving us forward. We also work closely with the Chinatown community to support the Lunar New Year and celebrations of the community's vibrant heritage. We partnered with the Board of Supervisors and the mayor to have free one-hour parking at the Portsmouth Square Garage for the month of celebrations and, of course, Free Muni on the day of the Lunar New Year. And people, I think, really appreciate that. And I will just tell you that having that first hour Free parking in the garage does boost the garage usage compared to when we don't. We also collaborated with the San Francisco Arts Commission to bring a new mural to Chinatown, celebrating community heritage and beautifying the station area. There's going to be a ribbon cutting to celebrate that artwork right on the platform. Rebecca, if you want to play this video, it's a fun time lapse of us installing that work at the Rose Pack station. So pretty neat. It took a lot longer than that, of course. All right, Lake Merced and Sloat Boulevard have recently also wrapped up construction, and Winston Drive, which you approved not that long ago, is up next. Each of these projects individually is good on its own, but what I want to say is together they create exponential connectivity, making it safer and easier for more people to walk and bike. And I want to say, combined, these projects are opening up access to some really incredible west side institutional uses and parks. So we're talking about opening up access to the San Francisco Zoo, access to Golden Gate Park, Sunset Dunes, Lake Merced, Stonestown shopping. So weaving together this network and bringing families to these incredible San Francisco assets is really what this is all about, not just commuter patterns, but really recreational kind of access. So those are just some of the accomplishments, but now let's talk a little bit about metrics. First off, I do have some big news from our curb management team. Following their successful work with merchants to right-size curb regulations, we are now establishing a more formal program to support this work. It's going to be called Merchant Walkthrough Program. And it is aiming at strengthening those partnerships with the merchants and local businesses and updating the curb regulations based on what their most up-to-date needs are. The team is working on advancing the program at priority commercial corridors, currently working in the Bayview on Third Street, Clement Street, Mid Polk, and Fillmore. And in past slides, as you can see here, we've done work in Noe Valley, Castro, and Union Square, with some additional follow-up work in Union Square coming up soon. Next, I wanted to take a minute to talk about 311s. That is something I brought at my last quarterly to you before, and you asked for some additional information and to continue talking about 311s. We aim to be, of course, as responsive as possible to all of our 311 requests. And what this chart is showing you is that This is my 311s for the last six years in the traffic engineering portion of the organization. So that's when people call for basic transportation kind of improvements, like people want a stop sign or they have a safety concern or something like that. So you can see from this slide, that we have reached a new high of over 2,000 311 requests in this past year in 2025, and it is growing. I have a very similar story in our paint and our sign shop. We saw higher volumes of calls in 25 than we did both in 23 and in 24. So the calls are rising. They're coming in. And I have some thoughts about why that is. First of all, 311 is really easy to use. And I think that's great. That's how it's supposed to be. Usually, you can report something in 30 seconds or so. And that's wonderful. But with the advent of AI and some people developing other apps, like Solve SF, which is something we talked about last time. It is becoming even easier, like 10 seconds, 15 seconds. And I think people are using that to file more 311s. So there's some aspect of that going on. And then I think there's another aspect of it, which has to do with the fact that we're putting in more and more infrastructure as we continue to do safety, right? So we did automated speed enforcement camera this past year. And right when that happened, People had questions about it, filed 311, saw things on the ground. Other things that we have is we love our slow streets program. And they have those purple paddles you've all seen. But they get run over and people file 311s. And in fact, recently, for whatever reason, I've seen a very high spike of requests to replace those purple paddles on slow streets. The good news is we are testing. right now on the streets a new panel design that we think is going to be lower maintenance and it's sturdier, so we'll see how that works. But that's an example of kind of new infrastructure that we put in. And with all of the quig builds that we have done in the past and continue to do, they're quig builds because they're done with not concrete materials like soft hit posts and paint and signs, but of course all that ultimately requires maintenance and folks are, you know, when they see another sign graffitied or another soft hit post being down, they call 311. So those are some of the reasons, I think, that we're seeing 311s increase. I will tell you that it is challenging, honestly, to keep up with the 311s given our current financial situation and kind of the staffing levels that I have. So what we've been doing is triaging the 311 request to address that. We take a look at all of them that come in, and we triage the ones that we think are like significant safety issues that people are bringing to our attention, and we just do those first, and then we go down the list. So, so far, you know, we're managing the best we can, but just wanted to share that that is a challenge we're trying to work through. All right. Now I want to talk a little bit about some of our safety work. This is just a slide that is reminding us about the toolkit that we have that we implement on the height injury network at our intersections. It's the core safety treatments. Those are in yellow. And then we have some additional treatments in blue that we do at the intersections after some additional analysis if it's warranted. And we committed to improving safety for people at all 925 intersections on the high injury network with this toolkit. And I'm happy to tell you that we have completed that work. And I'm really happy to tell you that on the eve of basically the new HIN coming out in short order. So it's nice to complete 925 intersections on older HIN as we head into our next phase. Last time during my quarterly, we talked about fatalities. And this time, I wanted to talk with you about injury trends. So fatalities are devastating, but so are injuries, of course, especially if they're severe. And so this graph is showing you. basically what's happening in trend lines in terms of collisions in the city. And I have to tell you, the news is not the best because we're more or less holding steady. You can see there's some back and forth in the chart, but it's kind of staying the same. So that is something we need to think through and figure out how to continue to address. And while that is what's happening citywide, I want to tell you that there are places where the data is a lot more promising than we are seeing citywide in those two graphs. Here's one example. I want to talk about Geneva Avenue from Mission to Carter. We have made layers of improvements on this high-injury street. We updated the signals. We did a quick build. We followed up by speed safety cameras. And now we have the lowest number of injury collisions since 2014. So where we do this work, we are seeing results. There's no magic bullet. Director Heminger, you asked a lot, like, what is the thing we can do, right? No magic bullet. It's layers upon layers in the safe systems approach. And working with other agencies to partner, not just engineering solutions, but other solutions as well from other agencies. Another example I want to say is Fulton, from Arguello all the way to the Great Highway, a street that is also on the high injury network. We started work there in 22. We are now seeing those efforts pay off. We have the lowest injury collision total in more than a decade on this corridor. In other words, a 53% reduction in injuries compared to 2014. Further proof that our work delivers measurable results. Those are just two examples of what we're seeing in 2025. And each year, we also produce something called the Safe Streets Evaluation Report. This report aggregates findings from individual project evaluations to assess various traffic safety treatments. Here are the findings from the 24 report. Close calls between pedestrians and vehicles fell by 49% on average where we've done this work. That means evaluated projects on average are reducing the opportunities between vehicles and pedestrians to collide. Pedestrian collisions dropped by an average of 32%, and for bicyclists, it's 15%. And where we've done this work, bike volumes also increased by 31%. When we do these projects, people do ask us about potential delays to traffic throughput, and we do also study that as well. Projects that measured vehicular travel time found that they did not increase vehicle travel time substantially. So in other words, we do look at what does this mean for vehicle and congestion when we put in our projects. So that means we're able to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety without compromising vehicle and, just as importantly, transit operations on our streets. I want to share with you a little bit of really good bike data. We're seeing some really impressive numbers from 12 bike counters around the city. Although bike counts don't represent the total number of cyclists, I want to be clear on that because I only have 12 of them throughout the city, but I think it gives some good idea of the trends. Weekend ridership downtown is now 101% of pre-pandemic levels. Citywide weekend ridership is at 92% of 2019 levels. And weekday ridership is 74% of pre-pandemic levels, so not quite as high. But it is going up. And I think we're seeing, of course, people return back to the office. And that's how that's accounted for. Let's talk about bike share. Drill down a little bit more. Bike Share continues to set records. It's really quite incredible. There were almost 4 million trips taken last year. That's 30% more than the year prior. I'm going to repeat that. That's 30% more than the year prior. And in fact, 10 days ago on a gorgeous Saturday, we actually set the daily new record with over 16,000 trips that day alone. The bike share system is delivered by Lyft through a contract with MTC. That contract is set to expire in July of 2027. So we have been working with MTC and Lyft to extend that contract by five years. And I'm pleased to say that it will now be extended through 2032. MTC just recently took a vote on that. As part of working with Lyft and MTC, we really focused on making sure that Lyft improves on the existing delivery methods that they have, that the bike share stations are much more balanced than what we're seeing now. So it wasn't just a straight-up contract extension, but we worked through with the contractor what they need to be doing better to deliver even better service to San Franciscans so we can continue to see that ridership grow. I'm going to move on and talk about a couple of projects that are coming up. In particular, I wanted to flag for you all that Caltrans is working on major upgrades. They're calling it the Fab Four, major rehab projects in San Francisco. You can see all of them here on the map on the freeway. Together these projects are repaving, they're upgrading safety features like the median and strengthening structures along some of the city's busiest corridors. We're coordinating very closely with Caltrans to minimize disruptions. This means we're looking at supporting detours and traffic movements and helping move traffic along with our parking control officers. This work has already started. They already did phase one repaving of 19th Avenue about a month and a half ago. And also 101 was partially closed over this weekend. And some other weekend closures are coming as well. So this work is going to be ongoing essentially over the course of the spring and the summer and beyond. And we're doing everything we can to mitigate the impacts of that on traffic in San Francisco. going to touch on parking because we're focused on getting the very best service for our residents and visitors as well as maximizing value in our city contracts so i'm glad to say we're making great progress in bringing two new vendors on board for people to be able to pay for parking via their phone and their app so right now the app if you pay by app you use pay by phone but we're switching to ParkMobile and Hotspot. ParkMobile is already operational, so I encourage all of you to download that. It's ready to go now. Hotspot, if you prefer that, that's going to be available in about a month. And so we're putting together major communication campaigns to let people know to switch apps. It's a little bit of a hassle, but I think it'll be better. Two vendors always have good competition and therefore provide better service. So we are also putting decals on all of our parking meters so that you're able to be like, oh, OK, this is the app that I need to download to pay for my meter. We're also advancing some key Muni Forward projects. Outreach is ongoing or about to start for the Fillmore Muni Forward, for California, for the NJUDA transit and safety projects, all of those. And we're engaging in listening phase of outreach for all three of those. Phase two of the 29th sunset improvement project is also bringing back some detailed design based on community feedback that we heard. And I expect that that project will be in front of you this spring addressing what we heard through our outreach and how we've changed the project based on that feedback. So I am looking forward for your consideration of that project in short order. We're working on streamlining some of our block party permitting processes. It is beautiful, beautiful weather, and I want folks to be able to throw block parties and get outside and build community. So we're doing some back of the house streamlining on that that I'm very proud of that will launch in April. Then we are also working with other agencies to develop the EV curbside charging permanent program. You of course know that we did a pilot. In fact, if you notice in your consent agenda today, there are a number of locations where we installed that infrastructure that you approved today. But now we're moving into the permanent aspect of the program where companies are going to be able to come to the SFMTA, get a permit to get physical infrastructure out on the curb to allow for EV charging. And that item requires a transportation code amendment. So that will be coming to you this spring as well. Now let's talk about the Street Safety Initiative. We've been working very closely with City Hall since the Street Safety Initiative was announced by Mayor Lurie in December of 2025. We're gearing up to give updates on the 100-day actions along with City Hall and our co-chairs, the Department of Public Health and San Francisco Police Department. The 100 days is coming next week. There's been some great work already. All of the department heads met last week to talk about updates to this work, but staff had been already meeting previously several months in advance of that. And the next week we expect that we'll be reporting out on the new high injury network map. While we'll be looking for the next HAN, of course, to inform our future work, as you can see from my presentation today, we have not been waiting for the map to move a lot of the work forward in the meantime. And we've been doing lots of this work that's, of course, also informed by the evaluation report that I mentioned. We're working on scheduling the next Division Zero committee meeting where we will be taking a much deeper dive into the new high injury network map and next steps and the various projects that will come from that. So with that, I just wanted to thank my colleagues for all this incredible work that we've been doing in the last quarter since I've seen you and Rebecca here in particular for pulling this presentation together. I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you so much, Victoria. We will now open it up, this item for public comment, for two minutes.

Members of the public wishing to provide comment will have two minutes each. There will be a warning at 30 seconds and a chime when the time is up. Any speakers can come up to the podium at this time for this item, number 13.

OK. Good afternoon, directors. My name is Rachel Clyde. I am the senior community organizer with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. Recent traffic fatalities and collisions have rocked the street safety community. And it is still top of mind for so many of us. And the community is really still grieving and frustrated. This presentation shows us that when SFMTA staff are directed to do something, they follow through. Staff accomplished so much work between October and December last year, and we need to keep the momentum going to make our streets safer for everyone. We were disappointed to see that the biking and rolling plan was not referenced in this update. Advocates, community-based organizations, and city staff spent three years creating this plan, and it needs to be implemented. It must guide the MTA's work plan to accomplish the goals in the mayor's street safety initiative, starting with slow school zones around all SFUSD schools and closing the gaps along the cross-town bicycle network. Additionally, we were really impressed by the data collected from Baywheels showing 3.9 million bike share trips in San Francisco alone in 2025. Comparing the data from Baywheels and the city's own bike counter shows us that the SMTA is severely undercounting bike trips. If we assume that for every bike share trip there are two other trips on a personal bike or a scooter, San Francisco had nearly 12 million bike trips in 2025. The number of people who bike enroll in SF is larger than is being reported and should not be minimized. While we hold all the emotions of the past few weeks, we must remember that these collisions are preventable with slower streets and better infrastructure. I'm here today to ask the board to double down on the data-driven tools we know work and encourage you all to be more ambitious and bold. Take the concerns of people who bike and roll in San Francisco seriously. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.

Good afternoon, directors. Jody Medeiros. I'm the executive director of Walk San Francisco. Me and my team are reeling for the recent events. We had to hold another vigil for a child in the crosswalk who's just two years old. And on this Thursday evening, we are going to be helping the family, Diego, Matilda, Joaquin, and Kawe, for holding a vigil for the two-year anniversary of the West Portal. Today, a piece in the San Francisco Standard stated that San Francisco leads the nation in one grim traffic statistic, the share of fatal crashes that kill pedestrians. We all must change this. And I know that you feel the same as we do. Walk San Francisco and so many others are demanding more from this agency. This is not to be difficult, and not because we don't appreciate the work of the agency. We know the team works really hard, and we know that you already care. But because it is very clear that more is needed to keep us safe. Today's presentation showed how when SFMTA invests its redesigning streets and adding more safety solutions, it works. We're all safer. Seniors, children, everyone. The SFMTA, with the help from the Mayor's new Street Safety Initiative Working Group, has to figure out how to deliver a lot more of the solutions faster. And one of the best ways that this board can influence the work is to really tell the staff that you want to see outcomes-based metrics and ambitious targets for the street safety work. Today's presentation showed numbers without the context of what's planned or, more important, what's actually needed. On slide seven, Director Weiss showed, and we as the public, We all can't see these numbers and know what they mean for progress. We're happy that they're getting a lot done. This was a lot of work in a short quarter, but where does that get us towards the progress of making our streets safe? In terms of finding efficiencies, one of the best things we can do, especially on the new high-injury network, is to add pedestrian safety zones, turn calming, and harden daylighting. Thank you.

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

Thank you so much, Secretary Silva. Colleagues, any questions or comments on this item? Director Hemminger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't quite know where to dig in on this. Let me just begin with an observation. My observation is that these subjects of traffic safety and fatalities used to be more prominent on our board. We got more reports. We saw more data. And we commissioned some work that I think has had some benefit. And as the public commenters testified today, No one faults our effort. No one faults our commitment. But yet we're still not engaging, I don't think, extensively enough to really move the ball here. We used to get, just as an example, a chart that I'm sure many of you have seen before. It's a bar chart over time showing us what the fatality rates have been. And I know we just had a relatively good result on that last year. But that was an aberration. I don't know if it was an aberration, but it was different from what we had been seeing year on year on year. So I'd like to be able to see that information again and talk about it. I know we've had a committee on the subject. I was on the committee once. I no longer am. So maybe I'm asking for some kind of committee report. Victoria, you mentioned there's no silver bullet on fatalities. And I would tend to agree to you with most subjects. But I think we've found a silver bullet. And our old pal Jeff Tumlin was a real crusader for it. And that is the speed cameras. And I know we've got all sorts of red tape wrapped around ourselves that the legislature imposed as the price of getting that deal done. But they did, and we're dealing with it. But again, that's something that I'd like to see us have some visibility in at the board level. And I know I've asked about it before, so let me ask again if we could get that information up in lights here. One of our jobs as a board is to shine a light on things that we think people aren't paying enough attention to. And I think this is one of them. And I know our new mayor is very involved in the subject. So I appreciate that leadership and want to see what we can do about it. So thank you, Madam Chair, for letting me go on some, but You know, I wasn't even aware, for example, that there's been a recent run of fatalities. And it'd be good for this board to hear that when it happens. I mean, the first step toward getting something done is to acknowledge you've got a problem, and we've got a problem. Thank you.

Thank you, Director. Victoria, would you like to respond?

Thank you for that, and thank you for the opportunity. Let me just work backwards a little bit. Happy to share with the board whenever we have a fatality and a rapid response within 14 days of a fatality, we also post our analysis of how that intersection has safety features or what safety features we need to add to it and what we've done. So if it so pleases the board, I'm happy to basically email all of you through the secretary when that happens and what we're doing about it. So I think that will, pun intended, daylight some of the things you may not otherwise hear about. Then working backwards on the automated speed enforcement, I hope you're right. I hope it is a silver bullet when we can get more of them. We're doing everything we can to make the pilot successful, and I'm hopeful that other cities that are part of the pilot, like Oakland, demonstrate the same kind of reduction. Yeah, they just turned theirs on. Exactly. demonstrate the same kind of improvements that we're seeing so that we can go back to the state and authorize more locations. And also as we reach, we're about to reach the one year mark when we turn some of them on. And in June it'll be one year mark for all 33 locations. After 18 months, we'll be doing an analysis and seeing what's going on and also if we need to move them to different locations, because maybe we've achieved some good results in some places and a nuts opportunity to potentially move them. So we'll be working our way through that. But I share your hope that that could be certainly moving us in the right direction. And then in terms of BART charts or fatalities, also happy to bring those. If it so pleases the board, like as part of every quarterly, I'm happy to, or every other one, happy to share that in addition to sharing that at the Vision Zero Committee.

Thank you, Victoria. Colleagues, any additional questions, comments?

I was in the queue.

Oh, OK. Go ahead, Dr. Manzi.

if no one else is in the queue ahead of me. Anyone ahead of me?

Nope, just you. No, okay.

Just a couple questions, Victoria. Thank you for your work as always. I think, as the commenter said, I think that this demonstrates that when we apply the tools, there are results. And so congratulations on that. And I think we just need to do more of it at certain locations where it warrants it. The comments are referenced on the slide where you showed all the numbers of things that you did sort of by the numbers this quarter. Is there a goal to get X number of whatever that were done? So as the commenter said, we can sort of see the scope of what needs to be completed. Basically, is there a denominator perhaps for each one of those at all? Is there a goal for a quarter?

Thank you for that question, Director Henze. A couple of things. It depends on kind of which measure we take a look at generally. So we have that goal of some of these measures on the high injury network and to complete 925 intersections total. So some of those, yes. And for example, on here is protected turns. So I had shared maybe last time at the Vision Zero Committee that we wanted to do 18 additional protected turns in the next 18 months. So for some of them, I do have goals. Other ones, they're not conducive to goals, for example, because it has to do with speed humps. And some of them we're doing proactively, but other ones we're doing as part of the traffic residential calming program and trying to catch up from pre-pandemic levels. And how many we put in is directly related to the constituents filing applications for us and us measuring speeds and implementing them where they're warranted. So it depends on the measure. For some, yes, goals and metrics. And for some, it just depends on the situation.

OK, cool. I think to the extent to which you have goals for the most that you do, I think on the next slide, I think it'd be good to put up there relative to what you've done so the public and the board can see the product we're making and then on the metrics I know that part of the 100 days was some dashboards that are supposed to be available and are updated? Is there an update on when those are going to be? Because I haven't seen any at the moment. Are they going to be released soon also?

I'm sorry, Director Hensley. For the 100-day action items for the Safe Streets?

I was just curious. You have some metrics on the slide, and I was just curious. Are those going to be publicly available and updated?

Which slide, Director?

I think the one where you showed the metrics of the street safety, there were some 100 day metrics that were going to be published.

Maybe towards the end of my presentation for the 100-day metrics. So some of the things that are on there are, like I mentioned, meeting with citywide stakeholders. But I think one of the bigger ones is essentially the high injury network is on that, as well as identifying what our next projects are.

Oh, OK. And that'll be released also with the high injury network, or?

We are working feverishly on that. I will not commit to that right this second because we're still looking at the high injury network. And I need a little bit more time. I want to be thoughtful about looking at the new map and identifying projects. But either way, we do have some projects in mind that I'd be happy to share as part of the eight quick builds that we talked about that we will be delivering in the next 18 months.

Okay. I'm sure I'll have more to say at the subcommittee, but yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Director Henze. Director Chen.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for this report. I might have missed this with Director Hemminger, but there will be an evaluation about the speed cameras at the end of one year, or is it? 18 months. That's January of 20, February of 27?

Yes, thereabouts. But I will need a little bit of time, because that's when the last data will come in, right? And so then I'll need a little bit of time to process that data and put together a report.

Can we get something? We do have preliminary metrics that the agency has released, right?

Yes, we release automated speed enforcement data quarterly. Yeah.

Has that come before the vision? I guess it was too soon for the Vision Zero Committee, but maybe that's a request to take a look at how things have gone.

Yeah, I'm happy to bring it at the next quarterly to this board or to the Vision Zero Committee, wherever, kind of, you know, You, Vice Chair, or Director Hintze is the chair of that committee, directs me to do. Absolutely. I mean, we release those numbers quarterly, and I'd be happy to share some of the statistics around that.

And Victoria, just for clarification, those data sets are released online, or are they released? Yeah, they're released online. So perhaps we can work with Secretary Silva to just send us the link quarterly, and we can all peruse those.

Yes. I guess the context being that I think that we've, at least from some of the preliminary metrics that we've seen and from the agency has released through some of the press and the blogs, things have, we have seen sea reductions, we have seen citations and warnings really sort of like come down as people are responding and realizing, and we are encouraging compliance, right? And which also means that we are getting safer streets out of that. And so I think I think we, I think we, it's come out through the press. I think people, I think it's broadly popular. It might be good to just sort of like really put a point on it because I'm not sure if everybody on the board, right, or if we've really had discussion here about that. I know it's not the final report, but I do want to be able to say, I do want to say and I do believe, right, that this has been really positive for the city.

I think that's right. And there's always a lot of media interest whenever we release the quarterly reports. We do lots of interviews and talk about it. And the interest from reporters is very, very high every quarter to track. They're all tracking the program. So I'd be happy to share that with the board and get your input on that.

Well, thank you. And then I think for Director Hemminger, I can probably find the, like, in the committee, subcommittee meeting, we did have a trend chart of injuries and deaths, so I can try to find that. Or I can send that through the secretary. Let's see. I also want to underline, you know, I know your staff got an award for this, but they're working really closely with merchants to really sort of optimize the parking and loading zones, like, in the corridors. It's kind of, I think, Always a complaint and I think but also, you know, I think doing that it's I know it's very time-consuming work But I think it's also very recognized work being out in the corridors and making sure that we can get the right the right things They're really excited about Two parking apps. I don't know that sounds extremely nerdy, but I'm I'm it sounds like a really cool thing that we'll be able to do and see And I think, you know, kind of returning, I think, to also, I think, sort of like, I've also heard in the news and also, and I was unfortunately in Glen Park when I, and was witness to the aftermath of a, of a scooter, like a scooter auto kind of collision. And and was sort of on the scene. I had a friend helping direct traffic until first responders were able to come. And I think having I don't know what's sustainable, I think, because I know that this is something that Director Kirschbaum sometimes put in her report, but to say, hey, like, and I believe this is what staff is already doing is in response to serious injuries or fatalities is going out. And so, like, looking at, oh, my gosh, what is that street name right by Glen Park? O'Shaughnessy? O'Shaughnessy? Is that right? The street that runs by Glen Canyon Park. Bosworth? Yeah, it's the... Yes, but, you know, Shaughnessy, there is this terrible, like, dump truck bicycle, dump truck in person on a bicycle collision that happened at 9th and Irving. You know, there's been some, and, of course, when we, at General Public Comment, you know, the two-year-old in Mission Bay near on, I think, on 4th Street. So, yeah. You know, I know that last year, I think things were, you know, the numbers came in, I think, pretty good. And, you know, some of it is sort of like the chance of, it's just sort of like these things, just sort of bad luck. But also I, you know, if we could get some sort of readout or maybe some consolidated report about some of the stuff that's the recent space.

Yeah, and what I can also do is the Department of Public Health puts out a monthly report that tracks the fatalities by mode. So it has pedestrians, bicycles, vehicles, and then they also track them year to date. So, for example, when they put out the report in early February for January of 2026, I could not believe my eyes because year-to-date we were at zero. And I was just breathing a sigh of relief versus year-to-date last time. We were already at several. But then, of course, we had very terrible several weeks. So we're, at this point, running year-to-date kind of what we would be. normally, but I am also happy to share that report. It goes out to a number of folks from DPH and we'd be happy to just forward that to the board through the secretary so you can see on a monthly basis where we are with fatalities by mode and how that stacks up against prior years. Maybe I think that would really help.

Yeah. Thank you. And then I feel like there are some projects that I'm very, I actually, I don't know if we, I don't know if the T signal project, T3rd signal project came to the board. I'm kind of curious to hear about that, but maybe that's in a private, that's for a separate thing. I'm very excited. I think that was something that came up in the Board of Supervisors and talking about the, about performance of the T3rd and the agency committing to making signal improvements to make sure to improve speed and reliability. And it also sounds like safety along that line. And I think, I don't know if it's in this presentation, but I feel like that staff were also this year working on, for example, Oak Street quick build. And I'm not sure if that was . I don't know if that was in here or not, but there are some projects that we are pretty sure we're doing, right, in addition to, I think, some of these projects that are pending, the high injury network pending, I think some of the prioritization work that you had mentioned.

I think that's exactly right, director. And so there's other projects that you have previously approved that are going to be constructed. We really try to pair that construction with Public Works paving, Oak being an example of that. So as soon as they pave the road, we will come through right behind it to construct the project. Same with Winston. So there's some in the pipeline that you've approved that are going to be under construction.

All right, I think that's it.

Including, by the way, as an aside, is Mission Bay Boulevard quick build that's coming. There's a new school opening up in Mission Bay, so we're working a lot in that neighborhood with improvements before the school opens and all the... Trimmings, new stop signs, yellow crosswalks, all the signs that go along with that, speed humps, lots of work going on in Mission Bay to accommodate the new school opening. And that will all be done before the kids go to school in August.

Thank you. Maybe I have a short memory, and maybe other people have short memories, too. So in the next presentation, just throwing up the, oh, yeah, by the way, you've approved this. This is in the queue so that we remember.

Thank you, Director Chen. Director Felder.

You mentioned Mission Bay.

Obviously, I see a lot of what goes on and what's happened in the last few weeks has really been challenging for the neighborhood. I very much appreciate the degree to which the department has been actively engaged and is continuing to work, as you mentioned, on programs looking forward. particularly relative to the school. There's a lot of concern about that. Mission Bay Circle, making sure that that complicated intersection is really legible. So I appreciate that. One thing that I have noticed, and this is both with the quick build projects in the Mission Bay area, particularly along 3rd Street, but in other parts of the city, is that I am seeing a lot of moped and motorbike use of the bike lanes, which, you know, can present hazards for pedestrians, can present hazards for other vehicles, and I'm fully conscious of the challenges relative to enforcement, but I do wonder, is there anything that we are thinking about that we can do to improve that situation? Signage only goes so far, but I do think that there is some just lack of understanding of the limits of of use that are intended for the bike lanes. And I just wonder if you have any thoughts on that.

Thank you for that question. I do, because that has been a hot topic of conversation for, About a year now, because we've observed the same thing. It's actually kind of a confluence of different things, because San Francisco is at the forefront of all of innovation and mobility. We were one of the first scooter people, and now we have an advanced scooter program. But that's now evolving, because those scooters are turning into gliders, which is somewhere that you can sit. on the left-hand side and everything in between, including the autonomous vehicles on San Francisco streets and, of course, now the e-bike and some combination of different e-bikes where you can change the speed on an e-bike and these food delivery mopeds and everything in between. And if that wasn't enough, I am hearing in the industry that there's going to be additional delivery vehicles, like sometimes three-wheeler, sometimes smaller, to help with that last mile delivery of goods that are actually already elsewhere in the United States but are potentially coming to San Francisco. So we are grappling with a lot of different mobility choices based on a rapidly evolving field and a rapidly evolving economy. So that is the overall context in which I'm operating. So knowing that, There's a couple of things here. One is we have formed, again, the mayor's office has pulled together a group of folks to deal with the very issue that you were talking about, Director Felder. And in fact, we have also prepared a document that maybe at some point I'll get to share with you as well. articulating which types of devices can go in which places on our roadway, whether it's the road, the bikeway, or whatnot. I think you bring up an interesting point about, yes, we know that, but how do we socialize that with the people that actually use the roadway, and maybe that's the next step in expanding exploring with that group, where do we go from there? So that aspect is happening a bit. And then on top of that, I'll preview just a little bit, what you'll also find is people are trying to figure out the safety of these things. We're working really hard with our scooter permittees around scooter safety and riding on the sidewalk and all that kind of stuff. But people own their own scooter and do all kinds of things. I will tell you that we are seeing increased number of scooter incidents and fatalities. So some of the numbers, fatality and injury numbers that you're seeing are very much affected by the proliferation of these types of devices on our street. And we're trying to figure out how to cope with that and how do we control that kind of thing. So it's a very much an emerging issue, but Very very much on our mind because I completely agree with you Some of the stuff I see on our roadway is challenging at best Thank you so much for your comment director fellow, are you good?

Okay Well, thank you so much for your presentation Victoria. I am It was really in-depth, and there were a lot of wins in here. And so I want to uplift one in particular as it relates to the 2022 high injury intersections that have been upgraded. So since October 2025, it seems like almost maybe a little bit shy of a quarter, have been upgraded since then. So in about six months, you did what probably a lot of folks had to do for a number of years. So I just want to celebrate that and just say a big thanks to the team for just kicking it into high gear. I'm curious to know, how were we able to be so responsive in such a short amount of time? And what did we do? And can we do more of that?

Good question. These have been a long time coming, actually. And we've been working on them for a really long time. And the last little bit of that slice of the pie that you saw me close, that were some of our more complex intersections that required some additional work. In a perfect world, I would have come to you at the last quarterly and closed the circle. But there are some complexities at these intersections. And I will just be honest with you. I look at the work program and I look at all the things that we need to do. And we work with our shops to prioritize the work. And it was really important to me that we close the circles before the circle, quote unquote, before the new HIN program. came out, so I reprioritized some of the work at our shops. But it does come at an expense of not doing some other stuff, particularly on the maintenance side. And so it is a judgment call that I make as your director to accomplish some of these really important safety improvements on our roadway.

I know we want to say there are no silver bullets. But I am curious, as you're looking at the Geneva Avenue case and the Fulton case, are there interventions there that you're like, you know what? These are a few in combination. These are super effective. And we want to replicate these in multiple areas.

Yep, thank you for that question. It is a layered approach. And I'll work backwards and say that automated speed enforcement, to your fellow colleagues' comments before, is something that matters very much. Signal timing is also another good one, and making sure that people follow the speed limits. We have been changing the speed limits a lot. It's on your consent. Agenda and we do have a goal for the number of streets. We're gonna lower the speed limit in the next 18 months as well And then of course physical infrastructure helps as well So each corridor is unique and has their unique needs but that toolbox that I presented to you that is in my opinion and that's shared by my engineer city traffic engineers what works best and But I can't tell you these three things are the best. Each corridor I need to look at separately. Fulton has its particular uniqueness because it's a straight up corridor. Sometimes if you're heading west, you're going down the hill from Stannion, so there's speed issues there. Things like that. On Geneva, it's another story. But we have the core toolkit, and we absolutely believe that it works. And again, those are signal timings. Those are automated speed enforcement. Those are daylighting. All the things that are in that one slide that I talked to you about and more. Treatments around protected turns.

Thank you, Victoria. And a common theme that I did hear in the comments from our fellow directors is just really trying to grapple with the moments where innovation outpaces policy. And so as I was hearing all of you speak about this in your own way, but trying to just bring it all together, I do think that for our next legislative update, I'm looking at and team to consider this. It would be interesting for this grouping of us and our chair, of course, and Dominica to understand what's in the pipeline for policy as it pertains to scooters, scaling speed cameras in particular, and possibly even enforcement on bike lanes because this seems to be something that's going on that is not helping us in the work that we're trying to do. And we're trying to do some good work. And I hope, you know, I just wanted to also address public comment as it pertains to the fatalities. And perhaps I realize that our fellow directors don't know this, but the chair and the vice chair do receive updates as soon as a fatality happens and our staff knows about it. So we are privy to that information. At least the two of us are. But it seems like there's appetite to grow the number of folks that get those same updates. And I'm very supportive of that. And I do want to thank all the folks that are part of the Vision Zero Coalition. They work so hard in uplifting the memories of those that have passed. and holding those families that are in deep grief. And so I just really, really want to thank you for that work. It's meaningful. It's important that those folks, those names are remembered, and those names are honored, and those lives are honored. I know a number of us have been to those vigils and have witnessed just the heartbreak that families are feeling in those moments where they're sharing their stories. And I hope it is. It is meaningful to see the line of questioning that happened today where folks were really doubling down on understanding what our progress is, what our metrics, how are we hitting our goals to address our street safety commitments. And so I just wanted to close this moment with that thought. We are very much committed to this, and we're very much committed to working with community to ensure that those goals and those values are not lost. I think we're ready to close this item. Yes? OK. Yes.

And that concludes the business before you today.

Thank you, Secretary Silva. Thank you, colleagues, staff, members of the public. We are now adjourned. Our next meetings will be on April 7 and 21. Thank you. Thank you.