2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 Bicycle Advisory Committee
Regular Meeting
Thursday, July 27, 2006
6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place (Polk Street), Room 408
1. Roll Call: Andy Bindman (D1, 6:50 p.m.), Frank Chan (D3), Hitesh Soneji (D6), Jerry Ervin (D8), Rufus Davis (D10), Casey Allen (D11).
2. Announcements & Acknowledgments:
Hitesh Soneji (D6): Tour de Fat was on Saturday, July 22 and raised money for the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council [http://www.ridgetrail.org/] and the SF Bicycle Coalition.
Rufus Davis (D10): The Third Street light rail is undergoing tests and may have limited fare service before end of the year or beginning of the next.
Jerry Ervin (D8): Jerry attended the Gay Games VII [http://www.gaygameschicago.org/] in Chicago and received a silver medal in the Individual Time Trial plus the bronze medal in the Team Time Trial.
3. Approve Minutes: Minutes for June 23, 2006 [http://www.sfgov.org/site/bac_page.asp?id=46806] were approved.
4. Public Comment: none.
5. Chairman's Report: none.
6. Committee Member Reports: none.
7. Reports on the Bike Plan
a. MTA Report (Oliver Gajda, MTA): Even with the injunction, planning activities are not enjoined. Current funded projects include the San Jose ramp, Broadway Tunnel warning light, Illinois St. bike lanes, Sloat St. bike lanes (will go to a community meeting at the request of Supervisor Ma), Mississippi St. bike lanes, Townsend St. bike lanes between 4th St. and 8th St., 3rd St. improvements, Alemany Blvd. improvements, and other spot improvements.
The Bicycle Safety Program is still active. They are developing a new Bicycle Program brochure and a safety brochure for the Waller St. learning area. They received 400 helmets for Helmet Bank, and Nick Carr is completing a OTS (Office of Traffic Safety) grant for expanding youth bicycle education. They will also look into translating existing guide into Spanish this fiscal year.
They are also working on a report card and have applied for Prop K. bike safety money. Even with the injunction, they have applied for North Point restriping with Transportation for Clean Air regional funds. It is cheaper to submit a new striping configuration when a street is being resurfaced anyway. Now with such configuration changes enjoined, it will cost $92,000 instead of the $35,000 reported in a newspaper to grind out the old striping when the new striping is not done at the same time as the resurfacing.
They are still looking at applying for funds for the colored bike lane experiment. The remaining $300,000 of Prop. K funds may need to be used for environmental review on Network Improvement Document.
Hitesh Soneji (D6): Hitesh clarified that no safety activities have been enjoined.
Rufus Davis (D10): Rufus asked about District 4 Supervisor Ma's concern about the Sloat Blvd. bike lane. Rufus also asked how many staff positions there were.
Oliver Gajda (MTA): Supervisor Ma felt there needed to be more vetting at the community level. There were six full-time staff and one staff vacancy. Because the Bicycle Program is 100% grant-funded and grants are based on deliverables, there is concern when the injunction makes deliverables to achieve.
Frank Chan (D3): Frank said Bert Hill had circulated the petitioner's brief. Were there any surprises?
Oliver Gajda (MTA): The petitioner's brief was submitted on July 21, 2006. The City then has a month to develop its brief. The hearing is then scheduled for September 13, but that could be postponed by a week or two.
Andy Bindman (D1): Did the office look into changing state law regarding bicycling and pedestrians?
Oliver Gajda (MTA): There are options, but he cannot comment on their strategy without the City Attorney present.
Mariana Parreiras (public comment): Mariana is a longtime SF resident and SFBC member. She attended the MTA meeting last week, and her understanding was the grant money may go away if the projects are not performed. Could this money be reallocated to funding the EIR?
Oliver Gajda (MTA): They are looking at reallocating Prop. K funds, but other grants have stipulations that may require an extension or a return of the money. Oliver is looking at all grants to see what funds will be swapped, extended, or returned.
8. Task Force Reports
a. Bike Theft & Security (Bert Hill, D7): no report.
b. Bike Plan (Andy Bindman, D1): Andy deferred to Oliver Gajda, and the committee then deferred to agenda item 9.
c. Bayshore Blvd. (Rufus Davis, D10): Home Depot is willing to work with the City on bike lanes, but the injunction has halted that. Rufus has been contact with the law firm representing Home Depot and is working to maintain the need for bike facilities at the site when the injunction is lifted.
d. Golden Gate Park (Susan King, D5): no report.
Andy Bindman (D1): Andy did attend an event with Mayor Gavin Newsom this last weekend to discuss steps he was going to take. They spent approximately 30 minutes with the mayor and walked from the roller skating park area to the Conservatory of Flowers. They discussed the value of Saturday closure including public health, exercise, family activity, etc. The mayor referred to an earlier proposition vote that he was reluctant to overturn. He wanted to convene a session between advocates and opponents to hash out a compromise, perhaps a test run of 2-3 months duration in the fall (Sept/Oct). This would include
representatives from the Conservatory of Flowers and the de Young Museum. The mayor seemed reengaged after not having taken a step since
the veto.
e. Committee Member Business: There is a vacancy is District 2 and possibly District 9 also.
9. Review of Proposed Bicycle Count Locations (Oliver Gajda, MTA): Some committee members received the map at the July 20 session, while others are looking at it now. There are count locations they would like to evaluate in the context of the report card or action plan. They want to reevaluate the same locations every year or every other year to measure the increase of cycling. After initial feedback, they were leaning toward a PM count although there were locations where they wanted to do an AM, mid-day, or even all-day count. They are primarily focused on commuters.
Andy Bindman (D1): Although important, why focus only on the commute? Counts in Golden Gate Park or Lake Merced locations could measure recreational riders too.
Oliver Gajda (MTA): The primary mission of the Bicycle Program is bicycling as a transportation mode, and resources are limited. Also, commuters are more concentrated in time, and capturing recreational riders would require counts in multiple locations at multiple times that would include the weekend. Recreational riders also vary more by the day or the weather.
Andy Bindman (D1): Andy wanted to capture the experience of the recreational rider that may not yet be ready to convert to commuting. Andy recommended Cabrillo at Arguello in the Richmond District as well as more points on the Wiggle.
Oliver Gajda (MTA): MTA staff discussed the many ways people go through the Wiggle and want to capture that with the limited resources they have.
Casey Allen (D11): Casey wanted to capture commuters to the City College system, especially the Phelan campus, and other schools. Casey was also concerned about the Cesar Chavez interchange and whether all path and street cyclists would be captured. There also seemed to be a high concentration downtown that could be moved to more outlying parts of the city. Casey did agree with the higher prioritization of commuters.
Hitesh Soneji (D6): Hitesh asked about the focus on the evening because he thought the AM commute may be more dense.
Jerry Ervin (D8): Jerry thought the concentration was greater in the evening, especially around 5pm on Market Street.
Oliver Gajda (MTA): The interns do not count on Mondays and Fridays.
Hitesh Soneji (D6): Hitesh asked about Townsend and 4th versus Townsend and 5th, wanting to capture all riders headed to Caltrain. He was glad to see 7th and 16th Streets near the Mission Bay campus.
Frank Chan (D3): Frank wanted to know if direction would be captured, north-south vs. east-west, for those locations with multiple facilities. He would also like to see more of the Wiggle added to validate the additional signage added this year. Frank also suggest a count on the section of mid-Polk from Union to Post that does not have a bike lane.
Oliver Gajda (MTA): They will generally count direction of travel as well as other comments including riding on the sidewalk instead of riding on the roadway.
Rufus Davis (D10): Bayshore and Portola should be Bayshore and Potrero.
Casey Allen (D11): Casey recommended using video equipment and wondered why it wasn't in use.
Oliver Gajda (MTA): MTA once had time lapse video equipment, but it was liberated from public ownership. They have gone out with video equipment for projects like Howard & 9th or to validate lane placement. The long term hope is to have permanent counters. Communities in Germany use video for and online live counter with stats like weather and speed. Loops are also placed in the roadway in France and similar to what they are considering for the Broadway Tunnel.
Mariana Parreiras (public comment): Mariana thought it would useful to have counts on areas where bike lanes do not exist, especially for areas where bike lanes are planned. This could better capture the impact of a bike lane, namely an increase in ridership. She asked how cyclists would be counted in the 2010 census. She also uses the Wiggle.
Oliver Gajda (MTA): Townsend and the Illinois Street bridge are examples where they will count at a location currently with no bike lane. The MTA has 1999-2000 stats from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) on trips by bike.
Andy Bindman (D1): Could they make use of additional volunteers to help as counters?
Oliver Gajda (MTA): Though there has been discussion of using volunteers, typically counts for projects are reserved for City staff so there is no perception of bias.
10. Hearings on the Bike Network
Casey Allen (D11): Casey agreed with acting Chair Rufus Davis to postpone the discussion due the injunction.
Frank Chan (D3): Dave Snyder (public) had expressed interest to Bert Hill on this topic but is not present.
11. BAC Administrative Overhead Funding (Susan King, D5): deferred.
12. Closed Session On Existing Litigation Action: pulled on advice of the City Attorney. We already had a closed session last week with Oliver Gajda (MTA) and the City Attorney representative, Audrey Pearson.
13. Adjournment
