San Francisco County Transportation Authority - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the April 14th, 2026 regular meeting of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority Board. I am Mirna Melgar, Commissioner, Chair of this Board, and our Vice Chair is Danny Sautter. Welcome, everyone. The clerk today is Amy Sayoung. I would also like to acknowledge James Kawaja at SFGovTV for staffing this meeting. Madam Clerk, please call the roll and then make your announcements.

Commissioner Chan. Chan absent. Commissioner Chin. Chin present. Commissioner Dorsey. Dorsey present. Commissioner Fielder. Fielder absent. Commissioner Mahmood. Mahmood present. Commissioner Mandelman. Mandelman absent. Chair Melgar. Present. Melgar present. Vice Chair Sauter. Sauter present. Commissioner Sherrill. Sherrill present. Commissioner Walton. Walton present. Commissioner Wong. long present chair we have quorum also the transportation authority welcomes your attendance here in person at the legislative chamber room 250 second floor of city hall when you can't be here the proceedings are streaming live at sfgovtv.org or airing on SF Cable Channel 26 or 78. Written public comment may be submitted by sending an email to clerk at sfcta.org or by mailing comments via U.S. Postal Service to SFCTA 1455 Market Street, 22nd Floor, San Francisco, California 94103. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk. We are expecting Commissioner Mandelman, but he will be about 30 minutes late to the meeting. And at this time, I'd like to excuse Commissioner Fielder from the meeting. Before the calling the next item, as chair, I'd like to invoke rule 3.26 from the rules of order to limit total public comment for item to 30 minutes for today's meeting. Each speaker will have two minutes to speak on any given item. Madam Clerk, please call item two.

Item two, approve the minutes of the March 24th, 2026 meeting. This is an action item.

Okay, I don't see anyone on the roster with questions or comments about the minutes, so let's go to public comment on this item.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item two, the minutes? There is not.

Okay, public comment on this item is closed. Colleagues, may I have a motion and a second to approve this? Moved by Cheryl, seconded by Chen. Madam Clerk, please call the roll.

On the motion to approve item two, Commissioner Chan. Chan, absent. Commissioner Chin. Aye. Chin, aye. Commissioner Dorsey. Aye. Dorsey, aye. Commissioner Mahmood. Aye. Mahmood, aye. Commissioner Mandelman. Mandelman, absent. Chair Melgar. Aye. Melgar, aye. Vice Chair Sautter. Aye. Sautter, aye. Commissioner Sherrill. Aye. Sherrill, aye. Commissioner Walton. Aye. Walton, aye. Commissioner Wong. Aye. Long, aye. There are eight ayes. The minutes are approved. Thank you.

Let's go to item number three, please.

Item three, community advisory committee report. This is an information item.

We have Kat Siegel here, our CAC chair, joining us remotely.

Good morning, Chair Melgar, Vice Chair Sautter, and Commissioners. At our March meeting, the CAC have supported the allocation of $9.8 million in Prop L funds for the Powell Street Improvement Project, the 22nd Street Caltrain Station ADA access improvements, and Mission Bay ferry landing. Members requested and have subsequently received more information about the ferry and water taxi ridership projections, which members thought seemed surprisingly low. We received a detailed update on the Potrero Yard modernization project and approved the Prop K grant amendment for milestone one payment costs associated with the project. Members did have a lot of questions about the Bryant Street housing, including about the reasons for the parcel's height limitations, why SFMTA can't itself fund housing construction and what the project costs would have been if the podium had been included in the project to allow for future additional housing development. We also approved the two-year professional services contract with HNTB Corporation for the PACS Bridging Study. Finally, we voted in support of San Francisco's OBAG Cycle 4 County Framework, including programming $5.8 million to the Safe Routes to School Non-Infrastructure Program, and we received an in-depth presentation from the Safe Routes to School Program Manager to go with that item. Members expressed a lot of appreciation and support for this program and also provided constructive feedback, including requests for greater emphasis on the relationship with infrastructural barriers to alternative travel modes, more focus on evidence of mode shift, and a request for more investment in carpooling resources. That's all I have, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much, Chair Siegel. I don't see anyone on the roster with questions or comments, so let's go to public comment on this item, please, Madam Clerk.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item three, the CAC report? There is not.

Okay, public comment on this item is now closed. Madam Clerk, let's go to item number four, please. Yes. We will do same house, same call. I'm sorry, we don't need to vote on the

Apologies. Yes.

Item four.

Okay. Item four, appoint Clara Baumgarten to the District 3 representative, as the District 3 representative to the Community Advisory Committee.

Thank you. We have Amelia Wally here to introduce this nominee, and she is with us today. She can say a few words, and I believe Vice Chair Sautter also wants to say a few words. So welcome, Ms. Wally.

Hi, Chair. Good morning, Commissioners. The Transportation Authority has an 11-member community advisory committee with members serving a two-year term. The board appoints members to the CAC, and each commissioner nominates one member to the committee. Neither staff nor the CAC make recommendations on appointments. Applicants must be San Francisco residents and must appear before the board at least once to describe their interests and qualifications. The District 3 seat is open as a result of the prior representative resigning. Vice Chair Sautter has indicated his intent to nominate Clara Baumgarten for the position, and she's here today to speak about her interest and qualifications.

Thank you, Ms. Baumgarten.

You're welcome. Thank you, and thank you, Amelia. Good morning, Chair Melgar, Vice Chair Sautter, and commissioners. My name is Claire Baumgarten, and I'm honored and excited to be nominated to the District 3 as the District 3 representative to the Community Advisory Committee. I've called District 3 home since 2019, and this neighborhood has given me more than I could have ever expected. My neighbors are my friends. I know the local business owners, and I can't walk down the street without seeing someone I know. That sense of community is exactly why I want to give back through public service, particularly when it comes to how we move around this beautiful city we call home, as I think we all deserve to explore it with relative ease. By day, I work as an account manager at a company called Mixpanel, though I've long been drawn to participating in local government and questions of how we design environments to serve people as best as possible. I'm a daily muni rider, an e-bike commuter, and I was previously a car owner here in the city too, which gives me a practical and grounded perspective on what it means to navigate San Francisco from multiple angles. I believe good transportation starts with centering people who actually use our streets, and I'm committed to being a voice for those who rely most heavily on a safe, affordable, and accessible system. That also means advocating for a wide range of San Franciscans, from seniors and people with mobility challenges who are disproportionately represented in District 3 compared to neighboring areas, to younger residents who are trying to establish themselves in one of the most expensive cities in the country. Given the challenges of our current times, I think we have a real opportunity and responsibility to make transit so reliable, affordable, and appealing that it becomes the obvious choice for the next generation. Through day-to-day life in the city and volunteer work with local organizations, I've seen firsthand how transportation access shapes daily life across very different circumstances and how much is at stake when that access falls short. If there's one thing I want to bring to this committee, it's the conviction that a robust transportation network should lift every San Franciscan and that equity has to be a core consideration for every decision we make. I'm honored to be nominated to the Advisory Council, and I look forward to getting to work. Thank you.

Thank you so much, and thank you for your service, Ms. Baumgarten. Commissioner Sautter.

Thank you, Chair. Clara, thank you. I'm very proud to nominate you, and I'm really appreciative of your willingness to do this important work. first met Clara through participation in neighborhood cleanups organized by North Beach neighbors a number of years ago and it was quickly clear to me that she cares for her neighborhoods and I know that she will bring that care to the city and to the people of it in this new role and I want to mention I was particularly impressed by her answer on our on our survey for this application we asked what their what anyone's favorite transit line was and Claire's answer was It's hard to pick a single favorite transit line, so I rank them by category. A, for efficiency and reliability, the 49. B, for novelty and excitement, the Muni T line, because the Rose Pack station is too cool. And C, in the weekend warrior category, the 45. And I appreciate that creative, analytical way of thinking in that answer. I think Claire's vision for Safer Streets is one that we could really benefit from whether walking biking riding transit or navigating with different needs the need to feel protected supported empowered as we move about the city and i think you will be a bridge between This body's work, this agency's work, and all of the communities, particularly young people that rely on transit but don't necessarily have a voice and don't necessarily always feel as engaged as they should. And I look forward to the partnership and all the work ahead. So thank you again for your willingness to serve. Thanks.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair Sautter. Would you like to make a motion?

Yes, and with that, I would like to make a motion to appoint Clara Baumgarten to the District 3 seat on the CAC. Thank you.

Colleagues, may I have a second, please? Walton seconded, and I think we can do this one, same house, same call. Oh, public comment, I'm sorry. Let's have public comment on this nomination.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item four, CAC appointment?

There's not. Okay, now public comment is closed. And let's do this same house, same call, Madam Clerk. Okay, that motion passes.

Let's go to item number five, please. Item five, state and federal legislation update. This is an action item. Welcome, Ms. Crabb.

Great, thank you. Good morning. I'm Amber Crabb, Senior Public Policy Manager at the Transportation Authority. I'm joined by Martin Reyes, our Principal Planner. And Mark Watts, remotely, our state legislative advocate. So this is our monthly item recommending positions this month on state and federal bills. And I just wanted to flag we did post a revised version of the legislative table yesterday to reflect some recent developments at the state level. So the recommendation currently includes support positions on two state bills and two federal bills, and adds one bill to the watch list. And that doesn't require an action. So the first position is on Assembly Bill 2276 by Assemblymember Saria. And you saw this last month on the watch list. It's also known as the Stop Super Speeders Act. It would require an active intelligent speed assistance device for drivers convicted of excessive speeding or reckless driving. There were recent amendments that limits it to a seven-county program that does not include San Francisco. So Assemblymember Haney advocated to include San Francisco at the hearing last week, but As a result, rather than the straight support position that was the staff recommendation, the commission may want to consider a support if amended position. And this would mean the bill would be on our watch list. And then if San Francisco is added, it would move immediately to a support position. And this would just give us a little bit more leverage to seek that change. The second support position we're recommending is on Senate Bill 1167 and this is basically establishes definitions for e-bikes and currently a lot of different types of devices, e-motos and such are currently marketed as e-bikes and this would simply prohibit that as well as have a clear universal definition for what would qualify. Then the bill we are adding to our watch list is Senate Bill 1246 from Senator Cortese. And this would, it's a pretty extensive bill that would implement an array of new requirements for commercial autonomous vehicles related to remote driving and emergency response. It could potentially address a lot of the issues that occurred on our December 20th PG&E outage that immobilized the vehicles throughout the city. So, it did pass the Senate Transportation Committee on April 7th with significant opposition from industry. The senator has said he will work with industry on potential new language before it goes to the floor. So, among other things, it would require that remote assistance be located in the U.S. and that have California driver's licenses to operate in California. It sets response times for responding to requests, for arriving at the scene and resolving the event, and then also requires manual driving systems on the vehicles so emergency responders can move them. So we're currently consulting with SFMTA and other San Francisco departments, including emergency responders, and may come back with a position at a future meeting. And then finally, at the federal level, we've been working, as we've reported, with Representative Mullen on his AV Safety Data Act, which is H.R. 4376. It's also Senator Markey from Massachusetts has introduced it in the Senate as 3742, and we just wanted to use this opportunity to formally register our support position for the bill. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. As a reminder, this is an action item.

Thank you, Ms. Crabb. Just to be clear, so you are recommending support for all of these, but for Assembly Bill 2276, the Super Speeders Act, only if amended to include us? It would be support if amended, yes. To include San Francisco? Correct. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I think that maybe we can take two different motions, one if amended and one for everything else. How are the negotiations going? Is there a possibility that they might include San Francisco in this?

My understanding is that the hearing, the latest round of amendments were just the end of last week, so I understand meetings are happening between Assemblymember Haney and the author, TBD, what the outcomes will be. But we've reached out already, and we'll do whatever we can to support his effort.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Crabb. Let's go to public comment on this item, please, Madam Clerk.

Is there any public comment on item 5 in chambers? There is not.

Okay, public comment is now closed. Colleagues, may I have a motion to support Assembly Bill 2276 if amended by Sauter and seconded by Chen. Let's do same house same call on that one madam clerk Okay, okay that motion passes and may I have another motion to support the rest of the bills 1167 43 76 and 37 42 by Dorsey seconded by Chen and with that also same house same call and That motion passes. Thank you, colleagues. Madam Clerk, let's go to item number six, please.

Item six, allocate $9,800,000 in Prop L funds with conditions for three requests. This is an action item.

Again, we welcome Ms. Amelia Wally.

Hello, again. SFGov TV, I think I'm sharing my slides. Okay, great. Good morning everyone again. This presentation includes allocation of $9.8 million in Prop L funds for three requests. The first request is for $4 million in sales tax funds for construction of SFMTA's Powell Street Improvement Project. This project is included in Mayor Leary's Heart of the City Executive Directive to revitalize downtown San Francisco and accelerate the city's economic comeback. Project elements include sidewalk widening on Powell Street from Ellis to Geary Streets, about 35,000 square feet of full sidewalk replacement, new curb ramps, installation of street furniture and planters, enhanced lighting, and updated loading and cable car service stops. The project is using a construction management general contracting or CMGC method with the pre-construction phase awarded in February of this year. The intention of the CMGC contract is to integrate a construction expert in the design process to work out any issues with constructability during the design phase. During the pre-construction phase, the project team will determine any impacts to cable car service, transit rerouting, and service support during construction and will share the transit service changes with the public prior to beginning construction. This request does include an amendment to the Safer and Complete Streets 5YPP five-year prioritization program to add the subject project with $4 million of the $18.3 million that's programmed to the Housing Incentive Pool, or HIP, grant program placeholder. And the purpose of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, MTC's HIP program, is to reward jurisdictions for building or preserving affordable housing with incentive funds. San Francisco did very well, receiving about half of the $71 million incentive pot. So this exchange was done so that San Francisco projects can access the funds sooner and with more flexibility since they'll be local rather than federal funds. We anticipate that some and possibly all of the remainder of the $18 million placeholder will be needed for the Howard Streetscape project. We also recommend a waiver to Prop L Policy to allocate funds for the construction phase prior to completion of the design phase in order to accommodate the accelerated project delivery schedule to meet Mayor Lurie's goal per his executive directive for the project to break ground by fall 2026, as well as placing the funds on reserve to be released by staff when SFMTA staff provides evidence of completion of design for each bid package for the CMGC. The next request is from Caltrain for $1.3 million to design ADA access improvements at their 22nd Street Station. This station is the railroad's only regular service station that is not currently wheelchair accessible. While the Caltrain system as a whole provides meaningful access to passengers with disabilities, the platforms at 22nd Street Station are located below street level and are only accessible by stairs. So Prop L funds would be used for final design of the recommended concept that came out of the Prop K funded feasibility study, which includes one ramp on the northbound platform side and one on the southbound platform. In addition, the project will include other ADA related improvements as noted on the slide. Design is expected to be completed summer 2027 with an open for use date estimated in June of 2029 Subject of course to securing construction funding Caltrain has committed two million dollars to the project and we are supporting their efforts to secure FTA ASAP grant funds that fund these type of improvements for legacy transit stops And then the last request this morning is from the port for $4.5 million to construct their new single-float, two-berth ferry landing that's adjacent to 16th Street and Mission Bay. Over the past several years, the port has completed earlier phases of construction work, including the removal of former Pier 64 and some underwater prep work. And the remaining work, which these funds will support, includes the installation of piles, floats, gangways, fixed piers, canopies, utilities, and landside improvements. Construction is slated to commence this June, followed by installation of the ferry landing float and vessel charging infrastructure, which is being provided by San Francisco Bay Ferry. Completion of the landing is expected by the end of 2027. Special event service and regular weekday commuter service will begin sometime after completion, dependent on SF Bay Ferry's operations plan. And just to note that Prop L funds will leverage over $72 million on the full project basis, including funds from UCSF and other federal, state, regional, and local funds. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions. We also have project staff from MTA, the Port, SFA Ferry, and Caltrain here.

All right. Thank you. Commissioner Dorsey.

Thank you, Chair Malgar. I will say that I am excited to see all of these projects, but I am particularly enthusiastic about the Mission Bay Ferry landing item before us. This Prop L request is specifically for the capital project, but it's my understanding that we have a representative from Bay Ferry here. So, Madam Chair, if I may, I'd like to ask if they could speak briefly about the planned service once the project is completed.

Of course. Yes, come on up.

Good morning. Mike Gowarty, Director of Planning for San Francisco Bay Ferry. Thanks for having us here today. And thank you for considering the Prop L allocation on the port's behalf, our important partner in the proposed Mission Bay Ferry Terminal project. We're really excited about this project. It's been a long time coming. We had a little bit of a setback during the pandemic in terms of the funding gap for the project. but we were able to work really collaboratively with the port and got a very large grant from the EPA for their Clean Ports program recently. That really gave us the funding we needed to close the capital funding gap and move forward with the project. So construction is hopefully well underway. As the staff mentioned, previous components of the project are complete. The port is awarded the final construction contract for the project. So I'm very happy to speak to what do we do once this is built. And so the operating plan on this one is a little unique compared to the other ferry services that my agency operates. It's going to be a short haul shuttle connection between the downtown San Francisco ferry building. Um, so this is a little different than some of the direct services we offer from other points in, in the, in the Bay directly into San Francisco. Um, so the idea is this becomes kind of an extension of the other regional services that we operate into downtown San Francisco. So services from. Sure. Uh, services from Vallejo, Richmond, Alameda, Oakland, that we operate, that we operate in downtown San Francisco. Um, but also potentially services operated by other agencies, the other public ferry operator in San Francisco, Golden Gate ferry. So services from Larkspur, Tiburon, uh, as well as Sausalito. Um, so we're, we're really excited about, um, the proposed service, um, which kind of unleashes, uh, points further south along the San Francisco waterfront to ferry passengers already coming into San Francisco and ferry passengers that would come into San Francisco when the service is available.

Great. Thank you so much. If I could just want to express my appreciation to you for being here and to share the information. Last week we had a packed town hall in Mission Bay on the topic of pedestrian safety, which has been an especially alarming year for traffic fatalities, including a tragic hit and run crash just yesterday afternoon in my district. So I will say that while there are many legitimate concerns around safety, in Mission Bay at least, there's also a lot of optimism and excitement for improvements to the neighborhood, especially and including ferry service. So my office will be involved in that over the next year and a half as we're getting closer to the start of the service. I do want to say though that I think Mission Bay residents will be very supportive of ferry service and other transportation improvements. Provided that everybody is taking seriously and addressing proactively rather than reactively some of the safety challenges that might go along with them. This is a neighborhood that has changed a lot. That was my stomping ground because I worked at the public safety building for two years. Even since then, the amount of traffic with Mission Rock coming online, there's a lot that's changing, and I think this is a community that is really supportive and optimistic about the neighborhood, but really wants to be involved in safety concerns. Public safety in this neighborhood is first and foremost about the experience of the public realm as pedestrians and bicyclists. There's a lot of kids in the neighborhood, so I'm just appealing to everyone. I think that there's going to be a lot of support and fans, but I just want to make sure that residents are engaged in these efforts and that we forge as much support for the use of the ferry service and other improvements as possible. So I want to thank everybody for their work on this, and thanks so much to Bayferry.

Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Walton.

Thank you so much, Chair Melgar. I just wanted to, one, just say in reference to the 22nd Street access improvements, I'm not sure if all of you are aware, but this is the only Caltrain station that is not wheelchair accessible. So this design work is very important. And I just want to thank CTA and Caltrain for their continued prioritization on this. This is something that we must make happen, and so I just want to appreciate the team and let you know that this is important, and I'm excited about this work moving forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Sherrill.

Thank you, Chair Milgar. All three of these projects are great. A couple questions about the ferries. Did I hear correctly that the first route, should we say, is ferry building to Mission Bay? Is that accurate? Just want to make sure I understand. I'm, like, generally excited about this stuff. These are all going in a good direction. Don't worry.

Yeah, the initial service would be the shuttle connection between the downtown San Francisco.

And then theoretically, I think I understood you right, there will be more opportunity for other services to say, hey, we want to use Mission Bay 2.

Absolutely. One of the great things about ferries is it doesn't require any right-of-way, so the right-of-way is already there. If the terminals exist, the operating funding is available, and the vessels are there, theoretically you can provide service from any point in the defensive.

And what size vessels are able to dock at this terminal?

Yeah, so it can dock any vessel, and this is a really important design criteria for my agency in terms of meeting our emergency response mandate. While we may have initial plans to operate relatively smaller vessels on the short haul route, and we're planning to launch 150 passenger zero-emission battery electric boats initially, for that terminal to meet our emergency response mandate, it needs to be able to dock any boat in our system. And so the floats that we're building and installing as part of the terminal will be able to support any vessel in our fleet. So, again, the emergency response mandate, that's really important for that. But also in the future, should demand pattern shift by volume or origin point, we could deploy other vessels to meet those demands in the future.

Do you mind giving me a little more specificity around this? You said any vessel in your fleet. I'm thinking, could a little two-person motorboat do it? Or I assume the Carnival Cruise whatever thing probably can't. But can you just give me a sense of the range?

Yeah. Um, so in terms of passenger capacity, um, we would have, um, our smallest boat that that's planned in our fleet right now is 150 passengers. Uh, the largest boat that exists in our fleet today is 445 passengers. Um, so that's the range in terms of passenger passenger capacity. Um, as long as a boat has, um, and this may be too many details, a common free board. So the distance between the boarding location and the water, as well as a spacing between the two entrance doors, as long as those are standard on a vessel, it can dock at this facility.

Okay, thank you. Appreciate that.

Thank you. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation as well, Ms. Wally. Let's go to public comment on this item, please.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item 6, Prop L allocations?

There is not. Okay. Public comment on this item is now closed. Colleagues, would anyone like to make a motion that we approve this item, please? By Cheryl, seconded by Walton. And I think we can do this same house, same call. That motion passes. Let's go to item number seven, please.

Item seven, amend the Prop K standard grant agreement for the Petrarial Yard modernization project to allow use of $1 million in Prop K funds for milestone payment one cost under the infrastructure facility project agreement. This is an action item.

We welcome Mr. Kaler.

Good morning, Commissioners. Jesse Kaler, Transportation Authority. I am joined this morning by SFMTA staff for this item, Paran Malaki and Tim Kempf. The Potrero Yard Modernization Project will replace SFMTA's existing bus yard in the Mission, which has been in continuous operation since 1915. In 2021, the Board of Supervisors granted SFMTA the authority to deliver the project through a public-private partnership approach. And in 2022, through a competitive procurement process, the SFMTA selected the Potrero Neighborhood Collective as the developer partner to work with the city to advance the project. In February 2021, the Transportation Authority Board allocated $5.8 million in Prop K funds to support the development of the project. Of that amount, $1 million was designated to fund compensation to those proposers not selected to serve as the project's lead developer through the competitive procurement process to reflect proposers' professional service activities during this process. SFMTA ultimately used non-Prop K funds for this professional services reimbursement. Last month, the Board of Supervisors approved the infrastructure facility project agreement with the developer team to formally move the project into its delivery phase. Under that project agreement, the developer team will be responsible for finalizing the project's design, completing construction, and financing capital costs for an up to 30-year term following construction. Under this design-build-finance model of delivery, the SFMTA is obligated to compensate the developer through two successive milestone payments followed by annual availability payments over the 30-year financing term. The first milestone payment of $65 million will be due to the developer at financial close later this month. The SFMTA has requested an amendment to the 2021 Prop K allocation in order to allow the $1 million in funding not used during the procurement process to be applied to that first milestone payment. All other fund sources for milestone payment number one have been secured, including $42 million in regional measure three funds allocated by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Our staff recommendation is to amend the Prop K grant to permit the requested use of funds. That concludes our remarks. We and SFMTA staff are happy to address any questions. Thank you.

OK. I just note that we are joined by Commissioner Chan. I don't see anyone on the roster with questions or comments. So let's go to public comment on this item, please, Madam Clerk.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item 7, the Petrarial Yard Amendment? There is not.

OK, public comment on this item is now closed. Colleagues, may I have a motion and a second for this item, please? Moved by Dorsey, seconded by Chen. We need to take roll on this item, please, Madam Clerk.

On the motion to approve, item 7, Commissioner Chan. Chan, aye. Commissioner Chin? Aye. Chin, aye. Commissioner Dorsey? Aye. Dorsey, aye. Commissioner Mahmood? Aye. Mahmood, aye. Commissioner Mandelman? Mandelman absent. Chair Malgar? Aye. Malgar, aye. Vice Chair Sautter? Aye. Sautter, aye. Commissioner Sherrill? Aye. Sherrill, aye. Commissioner Walton? Aye. Walton, aye. Commissioner Wong? Wong, aye. There are nine ayes. The motion is approved. Thank you. That motion passes.

Let's go to item number eight, please.

Item eight, approve a two-year professional services contract with HNTB Corporation in an amount not to exceed $1,050,000 for consulting services for the Pennsylvania Avenue Extension Bridging Study. This is an action item.

Welcome again, Mr. Kaler.

Oh, apologies. Also, we have received public comment on this item, which is posted on our website. Thank you.

Good morning again, commissioners. SFGov TV, I am sharing slides for this item. Thank you. This item is a consultant contract award recommendation for a planning and design study regarding the Pennsylvania Avenue extension, also known as PACS. The PACS project was originally identified through what was known as the RAB study, the Rail Yard Alignment and Benefits Study, which was completed by the planning department in 2018. The RAB established San Francisco's preferred long-term alignment for the Caltrain and future high-speed rail corridor including confirming the alignment of the Portal Project, also known as the Downtown Rail Extension, which will bring rail to the Salesforce Transit Center. The Portal Project is currently in the procurement phase and has a planned opening date of 2036, subject to completion of that project's full funding plan. The RAB also established the broad alignment for the future tunneled PACS project, beneath 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in order to separate Caltrain and high-speed rail from street users at the rail corridors two remaining at-grade crossings in San Francisco at Mission Bay Drive and 16th Street. In 2022, the Transportation Authority completed the PACS project initiation study, which was the first phase of planning and conceptual design work for the project. The study looked at several different design and tunneling configurations for the project and validated the overall feasibility of PACS. The PACS project is planned to connect to the portal at the site of Caltrain's Fourth and King rail yards, which serves as the railroad's current northern terminus. The rail yard site is owned by Prologis, a private entity, and Caltrain holds a property easement granting the railroad the right to use the site for transit use. For several years, Caltrain, Prologis, agency partners, and the community have been considering the opportunity to develop a portion of the site for mixed-use transit-oriented development. Last month, Prologis submitted a development application to the city and county reflecting a potential long-term build-out of the site in two phases as shown on this slide. The Transportation Authority will lead the PACS bridging study with a particular focus on the interfacing projects of the portal and the rail yard site development at the northern segment of the PACS alignment. Our approach to this work has been tailored for this project's specific context, as we acknowledge that we do not anticipate moving this project forward to construction in the near term. Rather, we seek to identify the design approach to protecting for the ability to construct PACS in the future, even as related projects, such as the portal, move forward prior to PACS. Over the course of the last few months and in order to select an engineering and planning consulting team to work with us and our partners for this study, we conducted a competitive procurement process. We received six proposals and we were pleased to have this level of interest from the consultant community. The evaluation panel with participation from the Transportation Authority and SFMTA recommended HNTB as the highest ranked firm based on the criteria defined in the request for proposals. With that, our staff recommendation is to approve a two-year professional services contract with HNTB, and we're happy to address any questions. Thank you.

Amazing. Thank you. I don't see anyone on the roster with questions or comments. So let's go to public comment on this item, please, Madam Clerk.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item eight, the Pennsylvania Avenue Alignment Bridging Study approval?

There is not. OK. Public comment on this item is now closed. Colleagues, may I have a motion and a second, please? Moved by Cheryl, seconded by Dorsey. I think we can take this one same house, same call. The motion is approved. Let's go to item number nine, please, Madam Clerk.

Item 9. Adopt San Francisco's One Bay Area Grant Cycle 4 County Framework, including recommending programming $2,153,000 to the Transportation Authority for Congestion Management Agency Planning, $5,843,000 to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's Safe Routes to School non-infrastructure program and $48,660,000 to projects to be selected through a call for projects. This is an action item.

Good morning, Chair and Commissioners. My name is Erin Slickter. This item is to adopt the San Francisco One Bay Area Grant Cycle 4 County Program Framework. The framework includes recommendations for funding set asides for congestion management agency planning work and for the Safe Routes to School Non-Infrastructure Program, as well as the criteria that we'll use to evaluate applications through a competitive call for projects. Lastly, SFMTA staff will present more information about the Safe Routes to School Program. And SFGov, I'm sharing my slides. The One Bay Area Grant, or OBAC, is a program administered by MTC that directs federal funding to a series of programs that support implementation of Plan Bay Area. One of those programs is the county program, which is designed to incorporate MTC policy initiatives, advance equity and safety, and emphasize a partnership with county transportation authorities like SFCTA to identify local priorities and administer the program within each county. This is the biggest pot of discretionary funding that the TA has authority to help prioritize. And so we go through this process to identify San Francisco priority projects for each cycle roughly every four years. We're now gearing up for the fourth cycle of OBAG covering fiscal years 27 through 30. As congestion management agency or CMA for San Francisco, the TA is responsible for nominating projects for the county program based on a target funding amount. Once we nominate our San Francisco priority projects, MTC will evaluate nominations from throughout the region and ultimately select projects to be awarded funding. There are a wide variety of eligible project types for OBAG, with a few of them listed on the slide. In previous OBAG cycles, we've funded various transit projects, such as the 29 Sunset Improvement Project, Caltrain Electrification, and BART Elevator Modernization, as well as local road safety and complete streets projects, such as the Central Embarcadero Safety Project and YBI Multi-Use Pathway. MTC has established a funding target for each county based on population and housing factors and is asking that each CMA submit nominations for 120% of that target to ensure that there are enough projects to select from. Our 120% target for San Francisco is $56.7 million spread over the next four fiscal years. On this slide, we're showing our funding set aside recommendations. The first one is as part of the OBAC framework from MTC, they make a certain amount of CMA planning funds available to each county. Consistent with previous OBAC cycles, we're recommending augmenting our CMA planning funds base with some of our county funds to keep pace with our anticipated needs. I'll have more detail about that on the next slide. But first, the next set aside is for about $5.8 million for the Safe Routes to School program. In previous OBAG cycles, MTC had region-wide Safe Routes to School investment targets consistent with federal guidelines. And while MTC no longer has a regional target in OBAG 4, CMAs may continue to recommend a set aside for Safe Routes to Schools programs. And we're recommending doing so to provide stability for this program over the next four years. Before I continue through this table, I'll explain a little bit more about each of these set-asides. For some more detail on the CMA planning recommendation, this request would augment the CMA planning baseline funds for long-range planning efforts, such as the San Francisco Transportation Plan and follow-on studies, as well as to support MTC in their regional planning work, such as updates to Plan Bay Area. As for Safe Routes to School Non-Infrastructure, this is an ongoing program led by SFMTA in partnership with the school district, and its goals are to increase safety and active trips to school. Ben Frazier, the program manager from SFMTA, will present more detail on the program later in this presentation. After these two set-asides, we're left with about $48.7 million for projects to be identified through a competitive call for projects. And as a reminder, this is 120% of the anticipated available funds, and MTC will make the ultimate project selection. To identify our priority projects, we will first screen applications for eligibility using a set of criteria. Most of the criteria come from MTC, although CMAs can refine and add on to the criteria to reflect local priorities. These screening criteria have to do with making sure that the projects are eligible to use OBAC funding, which is federal funding and as such comes with extra requirements. For example, projects must secure the minimum 11.47% local match receive national environmental clearance, and meet federal timely use of funds requirements. Based on our past experience with the extra cost and hurdles of complying with federal requirements, we have set the minimum project size at $500,000 for the OBAG request to ensure that projects are large enough to make the extra cost of using federal funds worth it. Then after screening for eligibility, we will use these criteria to prioritize those applications that are eligible. Our proposed criteria retain most of the board approved criteria used for prior cycles of OBAG, such as multimodal benefits, multiple project coordination, and safety. Of particular consideration when we evaluate project applications will be the criterion for project readiness and deliverability. Because the OBAG program is federal funding, it's especially important to make sure that projects will meet timely use of funds deadlines and not risk losing funds to the city or to the region. Overall, these criteria reflect San Francisco priorities and will allow us to line up project nominations that will be competitive in MTC's evaluation. And once we submit our nominations to MTC, they will do their own evaluation of applications from San Francisco and other Bay Area counties, and they'll consider deliverability, regional alignment, and federal performance goals. Lastly, here is our proposed call for projects schedule. We plan to release the call for projects today after preliminary board action and have applications due on July 7th. We will be posting the applications received online at that point for public review. We plan to present our project nominations to the CAC in September and to the board in October before submitting them to MTC by the deadline on October 31st. And throughout the call for projects process, we invite members of the public to share ideas and feedback on submitted projects. We invite comments via email or during public comment at upcoming meetings. And those interested can also sign up to receive funding opportunity updates via email on our website. I'll now invite Ben Frazier, the Safe Routes to School Program Manager from SFMTA, to present more detail on that program.

Thank you, Ms. Lechter. Welcome, Mr. Frazier.

Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, commissioners. It's a pleasure to be here with you this morning, and I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the Safe Routes to Schools Non-Infrastructure Program. Once again, I'm Ben Frazier, a planner at the SFMTA and the program coordinator, and I'm also joined today by planning manager Maya Small. So today, most of my presentation is going to be about generally giving you an overview of the Safe Routes to Schools program. Then I'll provide kind of some high-level lessons learned about kind of what we've learned through the kind of the OBAG 3 program so far. And then I'll briefly talk about the OBAG 4 funding request. So the Safe Routes to Schools-Led Infrastructure Program, we provide educational, encouragement, and behavior change activities and programs to schools across San Francisco. Through our experiential activities, we support, encourage, and teach students and school communities how to use and travel using the four fun ways. And that includes walking, biking and rolling, taking Mooney or the yellow school bus, and carpooling. Our programming supports students and families by supporting student travel, building transportation independence and autonomy, supporting student mental health, and also encouraging healthy and safe habits. The Safe Routes to School program is anchored by three citywide annual events. We have our annual celebration of walking in the fall, Walk and Roll to School Week. We have Ride Muni to School Week in the winter. This is when we try to encourage and get everyone riding Muni and other public transit lines. And then our big celebration of biking in the spring, Bike and Roll to School Week, which we have coming up next month, May 4 through 8. And we're really excited for that. In addition to our three citywide annual events, we also have a whole catalog of walking, biking, and muni-related activities and programmings that we offer to schools across the city. We have encouragement activities like walking school buses and bike trains, educational activities like muni field trips, pedestrian safety strolls, and bike PE, and activities including family geared bicycle workshops, teaching parents how to ride with children and how to safe, safely do that. And we have art contests and many other great activities that we do throughout the year as well. And so the Safe Routes to School non-infrastructure program does not operate within a vacuum at the MTA. There's a whole group of other teams and projects and work that we do that all serves schools, students, and families. This non-infrastructure program is just one of the many pieces. And some of the other complementary pieces include the school walk audit program, the crossing guards, MTAP, our parking control officers to keep those loading zones clear, the muni trippers. There's so many things that the agency does that goes towards school travel and our non-infrastructure program, which is one of the critical educational pieces of that. And so in terms of equity, given our program's limited resources, we prioritize our school engagement leads and prioritize the scheduling of our activities to about 30 SFUSD, what we call focus schools. And these schools are selected based on two basic criteria. The first one is equity, and this includes a combination of different socioeconomic metrics in addition to an analysis of school-related traffic collisions around each campus. And then the second metric is what we call mode shift potential. And working with the school district, we get anonymized data of where students live kind of around campus. And then we combine that with our student travel data that kind of tells us how students are getting to school, which kind of gives us a feel for, okay, at campus X, we know there are a lot of students living close by, but they're still driving. So we know there's lots of potential for us to shift those trips to any of the four fun ways. And so just kind of highlighting some of the growth and successes we've had over the past two years, the first chunk of the OBAG3 program. Last year specifically, we interacted with over 19,000 participants at over 200 events at over 179 schools. And this also includes private and charter schools who might have participated in Walk and Roll the School Week, Bike and Roll the School Week, and any of these other activities that are also open to the entire San Francisco community, not just SFUSD schools. And then the next data piece I want to talk about is our student travel tallies. So every two years, in partnership with the school district, the Safe Routes program and the school district, we collect these student travel tallies. And this is the only data that the city and the school district collects that tells us how our students are traveling to and from school. So what I have on screen here is the high-level summary of the 2024 travel tally. And we're due to do the next round this fall after the start of the next school year. But just some of the high-level highlights include, for the first time in a while, more than half of students are traveling using the four fun ways. That's walking, biking, rolling. using transit carpooling and Muni. And secondly, some trends that we've kind of seen over the longevity of the tallies. Walking tends to peak when kids are younger and kind of decrease as they get older, as schools get further away. On the inverse, we see transit trips increase with age. And then also for the first time in at least two or three tallies, we saw biking increase. It was a small increase, but it's been stable for the past several tallies. So we've seen an increase for the first time in a while.

So that was also great to see.

And so just at a high level, just some lessons learned from the past couple years of the program. One of the major things we hope to improve is to continue to deepen our connections with the school district. And one thing that that includes is trying to be deeper connected in the curriculum so we can serve more schools and students than just the limited number of activities we can offer. Secondly, we want to continue to make sure we're growing our collection of student and community champions. And then lastly, we want to continue to grow our library of walking, carpooling, and mini-related activities to kind of match the size of our biking catalog of activities. And then lastly, in terms of the OBAG IV funding request, we're asking for $6.8 million to cover 3.3 years. That .3 year is going to cover a gap between the end of the city fiscal year and the start of the federal fiscal year. And the funding will continue to allow us to continue to serve the great community of San Francisco to continue to help educate and encourage them to travel and use the four fun ways safely. And with that, I thank you so much for your time and happy to answer any questions if you have any. Thank you so much.

I don't see anyone on the roster. Mr. Fraser, I did have a couple questions for you. First, I will say this is really great, Ms. Lichter, great presentation. I think San Francisco is very competitive since we've had the transit-oriented policy for a while, so I think we're in good shape. I love the program that you run. It's really needed, especially on the west side of San Francisco where we have a lot of kids a lot of schools. What I was hoping we would do in terms of deepening, as you spoke about, is the coordination with the other side of MTA that does the physical improvement around schools. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that, because we at the Littles walk As they get a little bit older, they ride bikes and now take free muni to school, and we've seen an increase in that, which may or may not necessarily be supported by infrastructure in terms of the physical improvements that are needed on sidewalks. I know that in our districts, with me and also Commissioner Wong, we have Lowell High School, Lincoln High School, and Kids Crossing, 19th Avenue, which is dangerous and could use a lot of work in terms of the infrastructure, and on eucalyptus around Lowell High School, of course. And then I also think that we have seen an increase in biking, which is great. And we now have a biking plan. But the schools don't necessarily have the infrastructure. So I know a lot of kids, for example, bike to Commodore Sloat Elementary School in my district. And there's no bike racks inside the school. There's like a couple outside, which staff uses, you know, but not necessarily. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, about the relationship between the training and people part of it and the actual infrastructure and the coordination between the two.

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that we're actually starting to do a lot more is of that coordination. We have a new school's coordinator position and then a school's manager position whose duty it is to kind of work with all of these teams and kind of make sure everybody is talking together. to your bike parking point. We're actually working with APG and a couple of other schools who have requested racks. So we're trying to sort out methods with the school district to see how can, because we have racks that we can provide as MTA. So we're trying to work with the school district to see if we can get MLUs or ways that we can give them racks for them to install. Or we're working through those kind of like how we can get that to work because we know there is increasing demand for this. The schools have told us this. We're just trying to work through some of those administrative hurdles. So that's one of the things we're working with both internally with our bike parking folks and the school district with. And then in terms of other projects and coordination, we're also involved with the school walk audit. So if a school is one of our focus schools, our school engagement lead is at the audit. And they also support the walk audit team but also share how our programs can complement the infrastructure that's already there and that would go in with the audit. We're also working with the school safety zone program that came out of the biking and rolling plan. We're in a lot of those coordination meetings to again see how we can, as projects get thought about and designed, how we can support the schools in advance, make sure that those schools have the appropriate biking, enrolling, educational programming, And then when the infrastructure goes in, we can start to encourage them in how to use it. So we're thinking through all of these processes and how we can maybe in the next iteration of this program make sure we carve out a certain allocation of our activities for, you know, school got a new bike lane out front. Let's make sure we can carve out some education and some encouragement activities so that that school has that targeted programming for that new infrastructure. So that's one of the other things we're also talking through.

Okay, thank you so much. I don't see anyone else on the roster for this item. Can you please call for public comment, Madam Clerk?

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on Item 9, the OBAG Cycle 4 County Framework?

There is not. Okay, public comment is now closed. May I have a motion and a second, colleagues, to approve this item? Moved by Sautter, seconded by Mandelman. Madam Clerk, do we have to take a roll call on this? Or can we do somehow same call? OK, let's do it.

On the motion to approve Item 9, Commissioner Chan? Aye. Chan, aye. Commissioner Chin? Aye. Chin, aye. Commissioner Dorsey? Aye. Dorsey, aye. Commissioner Mahmood? Aye. Mahmood, aye. Commissioner Mandelman? Aye. Mandelman, aye. Chair Melgar? Aye. Melgar, aye. Vice Chair Sauter? Aye. Sauter, aye. Commissioner Sherrill? Aye. Sherrill, aye. Commissioner Walton? Aye. Walton, aye. Commissioner Wong? Aye. Wong, aye. There are 10 ayes. The motion is approved. Thank you. Let's go to item 10, please. Item 10, San Francisco Transportation Plan 2050 Plus and Westside Network Study Update. This is an information item.

Thank you. So we have Suhwani Cho and also Ms. Rachel.

Chair, if I may.

Yes, thank you.

I just wanted to, before we start the formal part of the presentation, I wanted to provide just a brief bit of context. On SFTP, it's a long-range plan. So it's a 30-year plan that we're about to share with you. It's our blueprint for our transportation system development and investments. So given that long-term horizon, the SFTP itself does not directly address the current fiscal cliff. that Muni, BART, Caltrain, and other transit operators are facing. So as you all know, we've been working with you, so our state, federal, regional partners, and the pandemic relief funds that have been shoring up transit agencies since the pandemic. They are exhausted. And so the loss of these funds exacerbates Muni's structural deficit. It creates this imminent fiscal cliff for these operators. And without new funding measures, Muni, BART, and these operators serving San Francisco will face devastating decisions about service and overall operations. This, of course, would be contrary to our city's long range goals around equity, livability, and so forth, the economic recovery of downtown. So we are very appreciative of our leaders and staff and advocates in the community and leaders in the community as well who have come together over the past few years to develop solutions to stabilize transit. And these solutions include the transit revenue measures that are expected to be on November's ballot, as well as a recent state loan that will help sustain transit while operators work to stabilize their budgets. So following the MUNI funding working group, MTA is pursuing a three-pronged plan to close the budget gap. And that involves voters considering both a regional and a local revenue measure alongside their internal efficiency work and identifying new revenues from other sources. And Director Kirschbaum, she gave a detailed presentation to the board in February on this topic. So with all ballot initiatives, there is the risk that voters reject the measures. And if this occurs, there will be significant reductions in the level of service provided by our transit operators serving San Francisco. I wanted to acknowledge this point. THIS CONTEXT UP FRONT WHILE NOTING THAT OUR LONG RANGE PLAN DOES ASSUME, ANTICIPATES THAT THESE FUNDS THAT ARE NEEDED TO SUPPORT OUR REGIONAL AND LOCAL TRANSIT SERVING SAN FRANCISCO IS MAINTAINED OVER THIS 30-YEAR PERIOD AND THAT WE DO FIND A REVENUE SOLUTION. SO WITH THAT, I WILL HAND OVER THE MIC TO ASSISTANT DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PLANNING, SWANI CHO.

THANK YOU, MS. HIGHT.

Great. Good morning. Swanee Cho, Assistant Deputy Director for Planning. I'm here to present the San Francisco Transportation Plan 2050 Plus. And SF government, yes, great. Thank you. We're kicking off our second round of outreach today with this presentation, and here is the agenda for this presentation. I'll just go very briefly through what the SFTP is and share some findings from our first round of outreach, and then we'll show what we're planning for our future transportation investments and close with the outreach plan. The SFTP is San Francisco's long-range transportation investment and improvement roadmap for the next 30 years. The plan accounts for all modes and operators, and it has three components. The investment plan is financially constrained and is based on the expected revenues we project for 30 years. The vision plan considers new revenues that may arise. There's also a discussion of strategic initiatives that can help us advance our goals. And this effort is coordinated with updates of the regional plan bay area. And just to remind us all, these are the goals that we agreed to in our transportation program set in the last major update, and these five goals, equity, economic vitality, environmental sustainability, safety and livability, and accountability and engagement came out of a years-long process working with the public, SFMTA, and the planning department. Now we're working on a focused update of SFTP 2050. This update is driven by three things. First, it's coordinated with the Plan Bay Area that was recently completed. Second, our revenue projection for the next 30 years is lower, which means we have to update our investment plan. Based on regional estimates, we see that long-term federal, state, and regional funding projections are about the same as we expected a few years ago. These are the three darker bands at the bottom. We do expect significant revenue reductions in local sources driven by changes in remote work and other travel behavior. These are funds that we control and are therefore more flexible, and this is shown in the lightest blue band at the top. New and anticipated sources increase, also based on regional estimates. This is shown in the yellow hatch. The total revenue projection is about 12% lower than we expected in the last SFTP, which was adopted in 2022. And here, as Rachel mentioned, we wanted to acknowledge the immediate issue of the transit fiscal cliff, where federal, state, and regional pandemic relief funds are expiring, or exacerbating the structural deficit and creating a fiscal cliff for Muni, BART, Caltrain. And there are two revenue measures that are expected to be on the ballot in November to help fund transit operations. The SFTP assumes passage of these revenue measures in 2026. While we know the revenue picture continues to fluctuate, the SFTP Plus adapts to this new reality. Okay. The third driver for this focused update is the change in travel patterns post-pandemic and updated projections for the future, which we presented in our outreach last summer. This slide shows the key finding. There's a 41% drop in trips made to, from, and within San Francisco between 2019 and 2023. Another critical finding is that while people are moving around less, they're doing more of their trips in cars and fewer by transit. And here too, we know that conditions are in flux. Transit use is increasing and muni's favorability ratings are getting better. but congestion is also still getting worse. Over the next 30 years, San Francisco's population and jobs will grow, and we need to plan for that growth. We projected that in 2050, if we make no investments in our transportation system, traffic congestion gets worse and transit gets more crowded. And so these are travel patterns that are not sustainable as we grow. So we'll now share what we heard as priorities during our first round of engagement before diving into the investment scenarios. So last summer, we hosted two virtual town hall meetings and reached out to over 200 community organizations all across the city. We met with, I believe, 11 or 12 of them. We heard a wide range of comments. There was very strong support for transit, better reliability of transit, system preservation, expansion, and major projects. There was also a lot of support comments about the need for safety improvements on our streets and also personal safety on transit. And we did also hear from folks who were concerned that driving in the city was becoming more difficult due to additional congestion, reduced roadway for cars, and difficulty finding parking. We did an online survey where we heard from over 700 folks. It was available in English, Chinese, Filipino, and Spanish. And this map shows where we got responses, very strong in the center and western parts of the city. We asked three questions on that survey. The first was whether people agreed with our approach to prioritize transit operations and state of good repair. And here, 63% of those who answered the question agreed with that approach. The second question had to do with limited revenues with our fiscally constrained investment plan. Given reduced revenues, residents ranked Safer Streets for All as the highest choice. That was the top choice for 32% of the folks and top three for 74%. The second most popular choice was incentivizing transit biking and walking, and the third choice was to invest in new major transit projects. The third question was what people would prioritize if funding was unlimited. Here, the first choice by far was making transit more frequent, reliable, safe, and clean. This was ranked the highest priority by almost half of the people, and 85% had this in their top three. Other high priorities include making streets safer for all and improving street pavement traffic signals and signs. This community feedback prioritizing transit improvements amplifies the importance of addressing the fiscal cliff and preserving our transit service. So with all this, and considering other sort of commitments, we shaped our investment plan. As a reminder, what I'm showing here is the SFTP 2050 investment plan at $80 billion. And with the reduction of 12%, we are at about $69 billion for this investment plan. And so I can toggle a little bit back and forth, and you can see that The transit operations and paratransit stay constant, as does streets and freeways maintenance. The other categories' funding are reduced. And then this is a slide showing the vision plan, which is what we would prioritize with funds that arise in the future that are not currently projected. So with the vision plan funds, we would prioritize the next set of projects and programs. Previously, we heard loud and clear that improving and expanding transit service was a priority. So we would increase funding for transit operations. This would be above and beyond the revenues needed to maintain today's transit service. There's also more funding for transit maintenance, which helps transit be more reliable. And the vision plan is about $26 billion and includes funding in all other categories. So if we can find the additional funds that are called for in the vision plan, we would have much improved outcomes. Transit would be improved. We could have new express or rapid service so buses are less crowded. We could have new routes between neighborhoods for more one-seat rides. Transit priority measures would help buses arrive on schedule. We could also fund projects that make transit more convenient and comfortable, such as enhanced elevators or better wayfinding signage. All of this helps people get to jobs in school and shopping, improving the city's economic vitality and environmental sustainability. The vision plan could also help us get improved access for equity priority communities in areas where more people are transit dependent. This could include things like beefed up aisle service for folks who need transit late at night. These improvements work to advance our goal of equity, but also economic vitality and environmental sustainability. The vision plan would also help improve safety on our streets. For example, traffic calming reduces vehicle speeds and cut through traffic on local streets, and we can do better to fund crosswalks, curb cuts, and signals to further our goal of safety. The vision plan would also allow us to have smoother streets, fewer potholes. Nicer streets benefit all of us and help advance economic vitality, safety and livability, and accountability. So in summary, this focused update helps us adjust to our current situation with lower revenues and confirm priorities for available and new revenues. By doing this work, we're trying to advance our shared goals and set ourselves up for a healthy recovery. So as I mentioned, our public outreach begins today. We've already scheduled several meetings with community organizations, and we'll be hosting two virtual town hall meetings, one this coming Saturday and one next Thursday. We're inviting folks to provide feedback via an online form using this URL, sfcta.org slash sftp, or the QR code that you see here. And all materials will be available in Chinese, Spanish, and Filipino. We've also developed a multilingual communications toolkit, which we will share with your offices as well as our community partners to help get the word out, and we appreciate your help getting the word out. After we receive public feedback, we'll use it to refine our plan and plan to have a draft plan this summer, and we'll bring a final report for adoption to this board in the fall. So that is the end of my presentation. I'm followed by David Long, who is presenting on the West Side Network. So we can take questions now on the SFTP.

I think there's comments and questions. And thank you for the disclaimer, Ms. Hyatt. Commissioner Chan.

Thank you, Chair. Just kind of curious about sort of this framing of asking the survey between, you know, highest priority with limited funding and then the highest priority with unlimited funding. What are we trying to get at? Because clearly the results, in my opinion, seems very different. and that while making our streets safer for all becomes sort of a clear priority, whether it's with funding, limited or unlimited, but help me understand why such framing.

I think what we were trying to get at was the difference if funds are limited, that it's sort of a different set of choices, I think, that people would make. And we were trying to get, I don't know if you can see my slides, but I went back to the two bars. There we go. So we also thought that with unlimited funding, there are sort of more, a broader universe of things that we could invest in. And so we were, we provided sort of more choices, I think, in the unlimited funding question, and to try to see if that changes people's opinions. I think what we found was that generally people support of transit improvements and transit operations in either case. But it was interesting to see that, you know, with the limited funding, the safer streets sort of bumped up to the top. Does that answer your question? Director? No.

If I might add to the answer, thank you for the question, Commissioner Chan. So by practice, our countywide plan, every time we do it every four years, we have a federally required constrained plan that only has to be consistent with Plan Bay Area and MTC plans. We're also allowed to provide a vision plan, and the vision plan has about a third more funding, so $95 billion versus $69. I think that's what we were trying to get at is input for the vision plan. If we were not constrained in our long-range planning to just what is projected to be expected by MTC, if that helps. It just gives everybody a little bit more thinking and opportunity, as Swanee mentioned, to imagine an unconstrained future and what blue sky desires might be.

I think I'm confused about that budgeting mentality there, is that I probably would give more choices should you have less funding. I would assume that with so little money that you have, what would still be your priority? Because the reality, any physical reality, is that we always have funding constraint no matter what. At least that's how I see it. I probably would have done it the other way around, meaning giving more choices with limited funding. Would you still then prioritize making transit more frequent, reliable, and safer and cleaner? If you give me this as any day, whether it's limited or unlimited, I will always pick having transit more frequent, reliable, safer, and cleaner, because that's the whole point. public transit and everything else be a capital improvements especially things like freeways or you know biking and everything else seems secondary to the entire core of why we do this it's the transit itself so I am I'm totally fascinated by just a framing of it and then to see how the mentality for, not you, but just the response that we end up getting, was then people will say, well, if you're limited, then what I want is for you to improve the existing condition. And we sort of just end up stuck with the transit system we have. But it's good to know that the way that they view unlimited funding is then we'll always be prioritizing making transit frequent and reliable. So anyway, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner.

Great. So I'll turn it over to David Long for the Westside Network.

Thank you.

All right. Oh, is it the same slide deck, Swanee? My apologies. OK. Okay, greeting Commissioners. David Long, Senior Planner with the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, here to present on the West Side Network Study. So, alongside the SFTV+, we've been advancing the West Side Network Study. There are a few things that motivated this focused look at West Side travel needs. First, after decades of relative stasis, land use regulations have recently been updated on the West Side. And second, previous versions of the SFTP and more recent technical work has found that the West Side has higher driving mode share than the rest of San Francisco. So with those realities in mind, the West Side network study will identify ways to improve transportation options in a 10 to 15 year time horizon, which advance our SFTP plus goals. Just a brief agenda for the presentation. I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about what we learned during our last round of outreach and then move on to the ideas that this effort has surfaced to address Westside needs. So, in our first round of outreach, we analyzed the SFTP Plus survey, the same survey that Swanee shared about, but drilled down on Westside respondents. We learned that Westsiders' top priorities aligned fairly closely with the stated priorities of citywide residents, but that there were some differences. In particular, Westsiders were somewhat more interested in reducing driver delays and improvements to street pavement signals and signs. That's not surprising given what we know about Westsiders' higher driving rates. We also met with a number of community-based organizations and neighborhood groups to talk about West Side needs. Those conversations confirmed the broad categories of need that we identified through a review of past plans, but added nuance and points of emphasis, which you can see in the column on the right. A particular point of emphasis added was around the need to make it safer to get around the West Side, especially for people walking and rolling and with a focus on schools. So the real contribution of this study is to identify new ways to address these needs. But we first took stock of the funded projects that Westsiders can expect to see implemented in their communities in the coming years. That's what's shown on this map. We call these pipeline projects. There are also a number of projects recommended in existing plans, but currently unfunded, which could be implemented if funding were identified. That's what's shown here. On to the meat of the study, though. We identified new ways to address West Side needs that would be We identified ways to address West Side needs that need additional attention beyond the pipeline projects and ideas in existing plans. That led us to 14 new project ideas, which fall into seven different categories. This table shows how the new ideas assessed in the West Side address areas of need. So the columns here are areas of Westside need, and each place you see a check means that one of the ideas surfaced is responsive to that need. So I'm happy to say that for each area of need, that is for each column, multiple new ideas have been identified which address that need. In other words, there are multiple checks in each column. So this map and the following show the new ideas that have been surfaced within the West Side Network study. We don't have the time in this presentation to go through each of them individually. It's a pretty wide-ranging set. But, yeah, pretty wide-ranging set from the introduction of a new 29R sunset rapid service to expanding bike and micromobility parking. to filling gaps in the sidewalk network, to enabling a one-seat paratransit trip between San Francisco and San Mateo counties. The next step in the study is to evaluate these project ideas' ability to advance SFTP Plus goals. So what you see here is the evaluation framework that we'll use to assess and prioritize these new ideas with a focus on the accountability and engagement goal area. Our upcoming round of outreach, which we're coordinating and is simultaneous with the broader SFTP Plus outreach, will seek to inform the city's understanding of community readiness for each of these ideas. So the end point here is to recommend new project ideas which address West Side needs and our evaluation will help prioritize those new ideas. Any recommendations will need to be further prioritized through implementing agencies standard capital investment planning processes and most of the ideas will require additional project development and have more opportunities for public input. So I'll conclude by sharing the key questions we'll be asking the community. Broadly, what are your thoughts on these project ideas, and which, if any, would be a priority for you? Also, what details should we have in mind as these ideas are further developed? With that, I will conclude, and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you.

I don't see any other questions or comments. I will just say that we are in a special moment. It's not just San Francisco. Every transit agency in the Bay Area and most of the country is having these post-pandemic adjustments. And at the same time, our sales tax supports the TA and our planning going forward. So I think we need to, Commissioner Chan's comments, we need to be thoughtful about how we prioritize things, how we do the short term and the long term. For the west side where we are seeing a change in our vision in terms of development patterns. We need to be thoughtful about how we proceed into the future. The future generations beyond just those of us sitting here today are going to have to grapple with the vision and decisions that we make today. So I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of your presentation and staff's work into this. We will remain vigilant and hardworking in terms of our and working with those around us in the Bay Area to collectively get us there. And so thank you both for the presentation. This is an information item, so we're not needing a vote, but we do need to take public comment.

Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item 10, the SFTP 2050 plus and the West Side Network study update? There's not.

Okay, public comment on this item is now closed. Let's go to item 11, please.

Item 11, introduction of new items. This is an information item.

I don't see anyone on the roster with new items, so let's go to item 12, please.

Item 12, public comment. Is there anyone in the chamber who wishes to speak on item 12? There's not. Okay, public comment is now closed.

Let's go to item 13. Item 13, adjournment. We are adjourned. Thank you.

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