SFMTA Archives — Page 3 of 7 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

State may require rideshare companies to own fleet of wheelchair accessible cars

Erica Hanna

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March 10, 2014

State may require rideshare companies to own fleet of wheelchair accessible cars

As cabbies flee the taxi industry to drive for so-called rideshare companies such as Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, specially made taxis for the disabled are left sitting idle in their garages.

At a hearing last week, SFMTA Taxi Director Christiane Hayashi said the city is in a disability community transit crisis. But the Guardian has learned that the California Public Utilities Commission is considering requiring rideshare companies to provide their own vehicle fleet for the disabled community.

“We could require these companies to own their own fleet,…a fleet that’s accessible to the disabled community,” Marzia Zafar, the director of policy and planning division at the CPUC, told the Guardian. “We can certainly do that when we have the information, if we see that divide.”

The plan could be implemented as early as September, she said.

If so, it would be a first for the nascent rideshare industry, legally known in California as Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) because they link drivers to customers via an app. The companies contend they are not taxi services and only are technology providers.

It’s a legal defense they’ve used to avoid paying insurance in accidents. The change would move the companies closer to mirroring taxi companies, Hayashi said.

“At that point, why aren’t they taxis? Other than the paint job, they are pretty much the same,” she told the Guardian.

CPUC director of policy and planning division at the CPUC tells the Guardian that TNCs like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar may be required to provide wheelchair accessible vehicles.

Notably, the TNCs are regulated by the CPUC, whereas taxis are regulated by municipalities. In San Francisco, that would be the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. It’s that divide that was debated last week at the Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee meeting.

At the committee, Sup. Eric Mar held a hearing on the regulatory status of rideshare companies. Standing at a podium in front of the supervisors, Hayashi provided data on the declining use of paratransit vehicles, which are taxi vehicles modified to allow disability access like wheelchair use and railings.

In January of 2013, there were about 1,400 wheelchair rides within the paratransit system, and by December 2013, the monthly usage was at about 600 rides.

The reason? There were fewer cabbies left to drive them, she said. The drivers are leaving for the TNC companies, which have higher profit margins due to their lesser regulatory burdens.

Jonathan Lyens, a man who is legally blind and uses a guide dog, said at the hearing that a rideshare vehicle refused him service because he didn’t want the dog in the car, and another driver said he didn’t mind the dog because he was “being nice,” but wasn’t required to carry the dog in his vehicle.

One of the burdens the taxis have but the TNCs do not, yet, is a responsibility to provide wheelchair accessible cars and to guarantee access for the disabled.

The TNCs, Lyft, Sidecar, Uber, and others were however required to file their disability access plans with the CPUC. Few touch on providing wheelchair access. They mostly mention non-discriminatory statements and giving access to the blind — all fixes that don’t require changes to existing vehicles, only the companies’ apps.

Uber’s plan, laid about by parent company Rasier, mentions a checkbox for disability needs: “A user’s profile will have a field in which the user may indicate that she or he has a need for accessible vehicles and a field that allows a user to specify his or her access needs.”

But it also mentioned providing its own vehicles as well: “Rasier will reach out to transportation companies with accessible vehicles about the possibility of partnering with Rasier to provide accessible transportation to users of the App.”

We reached out to Uber spokesperson Andrew Noyes and asked what the company can do, if anything, to bridge the access gap for the disabled in the short term. Noyes said Uber has made its app more accessible to the disability community.

“Technology is rapidly transforming the transportation industry, and Uber is proud of the positive effect our technology has had on increasing the mobility and freedom of our users and partner-drivers with disabilities,” he said.

He sent us an email laying out key points on Uber’s disability access:

Uber has been lauded by many visually impaired riders for increasing their mobility with a reliable transportation request option that is adaptable to their needs.
Uber has taken significant steps to ensure accessibility of its app, including implementing full VoiceOver support for its iOS application.
Uber and Rasier have partnered with hearing-impaired drivers who use technology to communicate with their passengers.
Uber has made it easier and cheaper for patients to request transportation to and from medical appointments.
Uber maintains a policy that service animals should be accommodated as required by applicable laws.

Cabbies are lining up by the boatload to decry rideshare here at SF City Hall. @Uber @lyft @Sidecar pic.twitter.com/Z8kSAM7xZH

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) March 6, 2014

None of those points touch on wheelchair accessible cars. Kate Toran, paratransit manager for the SFMTA, analyzed the disability-access proposals of the rideshare companies, reaching much the same conclusion.

“Simply adding a feature to an app that allows a rider to request a wheelchair accessible vehicle will be meaningless unless there are vehicles in the fleet and properly trained drivers,” she said.

Marzia Zafar said that as far as the CPUC is concerned, there isn’t enough data at this point to say why the disabled community isn’t riding taxis as often as they did before, despite the SFMTA’s presentation.

“The commission will step in once we have information, verifiable information, that there’s a divide between the disabled and abled community,” she said. “If there is such discrimination (on part of the TNCs), we will step in and bridge that divide.”

Climate fight is a street fight

Michael Redmond

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February 25, 2014

41

STREET FIGHT

Prolonged warm-weather droughts seem a normal part of California life, but the intensity of drought impacts — shrinking snowpack, intense wildfires, crop failures, and the devastation of wildlife habitat and fisheries — is likely accentuated by global warming.

So it’s not enough to simply save water. In this drought, our sense of urgency about global warming should be ramped up. The science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, respected scientists like James Hansen, and even the World Bank (historically no friend to radical ecologists) all stress that droughts will get worse unless greenhouse gas emissions peak in the next decade.

The science is clear. If we are to avoid a disastrous future of ecological upheaval, violence, and forced mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people (many of whom produce the least amount of carbon emissions) then we must dramatically reduce emissions now, and we must do it in a globally fair and equitable way. And to be fair and equitable, we must reduce driving. Here’s why.

Globally, transportation is the fastest growing sector of greenhouse emissions, owing in large measure to the expansion of global automobility. Presently 500 million passenger cars are in use (approximately one-third of them in the United States), but by 2030, this figure is expected to reach 1 billion worldwide.

This increase in automobility will contribute substantially to the “trillionth ton” of cumulative carbon emissions, which is an emissions threshold signaling global climate catastrophe. Today we are more than halfway there (556 billion tons). At current rates of consumption, including America’s ownership of 800 cars and trucks per 1,000 persons, we hit the trillionth ton in 28 years.

To avoid this, we must keep as much fossil fuel as possible in the ground. Because the United States is disproportionately responsible for at least 27 percent of the cumulative carbon emissions since industrialization, and has a disproportionate number of cars compared to the rest of the world, we in the United States have a particular responsibility to keep carbon in the ground.

If China, which has produced 10 percent of global emissions so far, had the same per capita car ownership rate as the United States, there would be over 500 million more cars, doubling the current worldwide rate. This would be madness. It would be worse than building the Keystone pipeline, which is what Hansen called “game over” for the global climate because it’s a spigot into the sticky, tarlike oils in Alberta which, if fully tapped, would be a carbon time bomb.

Ask yourself this: If China (and possibly India) successfully copy American-style driving, how much tar sands would that require? What kind of world would that look like? And if Americans (and especially environmentalists) expect the global middle class in China and India to stand aside while we keep on driving, that is stark, crass, and inequitable.

Many well-meaning environmentalists and progressives think that driving a Prius or buying an electric car will be adequate in mitigating this conundrum. They must reconsider. There is no “green” car when a global middle class replicates American driving patterns.

If the world’s fleet of gasoline-powered automobiles magically shifts to electric, hydrogen fuel cells, or biofuels, the change will draw resources away from industrial, residential, and food systems, or it will have to involve an entirely new layer of energy production (more tar sands). Massive quantities of coal and petroleum will be needed to scale-up to wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear, and other arrays of energy, as well as for all the new “clean cars.”

Are environmentalists still planning to drive around the Bay Area while waiting for this magic? I sure hope not.

In these global warming days, with drought on everyone’s mind, we must avoid wasting precious water washing cars, and we must reallocate street space with fewer cars in mind. A critical piece of the puzzle is to prioritize public transit and bicycles over automobiles by building exclusive transit and bicycle lanes, remove the lanes and curbside parking available to cars, install signal prioritization for transit and bicycles at intersections, queue-jumping so that transit can bypasses traffic stalled at intersections, restrictions on turns for automobiles, and transit stop improvements including bus stop bulb-outs and amenities.

Reconfigured streets must furthermore exclude car-oriented land uses like more off-street parking in the 92,000 new housing units projected for San Francisco by Plan Bay Area. These units, whatever size or income, should be completely car-free. And this must include removal of existing parking beneath homes, replacing garages with housing and returning the privatized curb cut to the public.

VISIONS FOR HAIGHT

In many respects, the Haight Street corridor is a model for the kind of global warming mitigation strategy the rest of America should follow. The corridor has high density, transit dependent, and car-free households (over 30 percent in the Upper Haight and almost 50 percent in the Lower Haight/Hayes Valley) It has several walkable neighborhood commercial districts, as well as several hundred units of new housing (some of which are below market rate) under construction in Hayes Valley. Almost 25,000 passengers take the Haight buses (6-Parnassus and 71-Haight Noriega) daily, making it one of the busiest combined transit corridors in the city.

But the buses are crowded and often stuck in traffic, so the SFMTA has plans to improve service by increasing frequency, converting more of the existing route into faster “limited” service whereby some buses stop only at key points and removing the “jog” at Laguna and Page which adds delay to the inbound buses.

As I’ve written before, the Muni staff has a good plan known as the Transit Effectiveness Project, with a modest reallocation of street space for higher transit reliability, attracting more ridership, and potentially enabling San Franciscans to conveniently reduce driving to half of all trips by 2018 (it was at 62 percent in 2012). But on both ends of Haight Street, the city has fumbled. While not a disaster, hopefully Muni can learn some lessons and tweak the plans.

On the eastern end, Muni will shift buses off Page Street, converting a short segment of Haight back to two-way. The new two-way Haight includes a transit-only lane between Laguna and Gough/Market streets, which will dramatically improve travel times and reliability. Part of it will enable buses to bypass queues of cars making the right turn from Haight onto Octavia.

Where this scheme falls short is in the plans to simply give former bus stops on Page to private cars for parking. A more progressive plan would instead use the space to help make room for needed bicycle improvements on Page between Laguna and Market. Nearby are multiple housing construction sites where curbside parking has been temporarily removed — such as at the 55 Laguna site. The city has a great opportunity to innovate with transit-first policies at all of these construction sites.

Instead of turning space over to private cars when construction concludes, the city could instead build more bus lanes, pedestrian space, curbside car sharing, and bicycle space. The city could also return some of the space to parking, but only in exchange for parking removal upstream, such as at Haight and Fillmore, where bus stop improvements are sorely needed.

Throughout the city, there are block-by-block opportunities like these, where the city can help the climate instead of giving away parking. As the city discontinues bus stops and sees more housing construction, the policy should be to use curbside space for bicycles, pedestrians, or curbside car share — not simply giving it away to private car parking.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Haight, the city has also fumbled in proposing to reroute the 6-Parnassus, an important electric trolley bus line, off the Frederick-Cole-Parnassus segment. Bus riders in the Upper Haight are incensed. At a recent public meeting, a crowd of 90 people balked at the cut. Muni planners defended the proposal, arguing that ridership is low in the hilly segment above, and that a less productive segment would be shifted to the more crowded Haight Street.

This might seem logical but it may also be shortsighted, especially since the existing segment has overhead trolley wires. Drought notwithstanding, the electric trolley buses are the greenest motorized mobility in San Francisco, propelled by hydroelectricity from Hetch Hetchy.

Taking a longer and more progressive view, it might be useful to think of the debate over the 6-Parnassus this way: If the city is hoping to wean motorists from their cars by achieving the laudable goal of having 30 percent of all trips in the city by transit (up from 17 percent today), cutting service, even in relatively low ridership routes, is counterproductive. It raises the question: Is the ridership level low because the service was poor to begin with, including such irritating factors as less frequency, less reliability, or fewer hours of service? What would ridership levels look like if these less-crowded routes had high frequency, all-day and late-night service with high reliability?

Moreover, what would demand for these routes look like if parking were substantially reduced throughout the city while car-travel lanes were removed, creating space for bicycle lanes and transit lanes? Or what if there were a regional gasoline tax, a congestion charge, or other measures that priced automobility closer to its real social cost, thus producing higher demand for transit?

Surely, reducing the footprint of transit service, however inefficient that service might seem now, is not creating a template necessary for carrying 1.4 million daily passengers in the future, which is what it would take to reach significant emissions reduction goals and 30 percent mode share. Removing segments like the 6-Parnassus on Frederick will only make it harder to rebuild and accomplish that goal. And for political expediency it will also make it harder for Mayor Ed Lee to sell his transportation funding ballot proposals to progressive voters in November.

Muni planners ought to ditch the proposal to reroute the 6-Parnassus, and instead focus on maximizing improved reliability and transit efficiency on the other end of Haight Street by removing parking and prioritizing transit and bicycling on Haight and Page respectively.

Thinking globally about climate change means acting locally, on the streets of San Francisco.

Street Fight is a monthly column by Jason Henderson, a professor at San Francisco State University’s Department of Geography and Environment.

SFBG Wrap

Michael Redmond

-

February 25, 2014

0

Google bus plan challenged

San Francisco activists and labor filed an appeal of the controversial commuter shuttle (aka, the Google buses) pilot program with the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 19, alleging it was pushed through without a proper environmental review.

The appeal was filed by a coalition of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, SEIU 1021, The League of Pissed Off Voters, and Sara Shortt of the Housing Rights Committee.

The shuttles, mostly to Silicon Valley tech firms, pick up passengers at Muni bus stops. The use of public bus stops would incur a $271 fine for private autos, and often do, but the shuttles have largely received a free pass from the city. Last month, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency approved a pilot plan hatched behind closed doors that allows use of 200 bus stops by the private shuttles, charging only $1 per stop, per day.

The appeal alleges that the program needed review under the California Environmental Quality Act, which asks for projects to be analyzed for, among other things, land use, housing, and public health impacts.

“CEQA actually identifies displacement as an environmental impact,” attorney Richard Drury, who filed the appeal on behalf of the coalition, told us. “Almost no one knows that. Honestly I didn’t know that, until I started researching all of this.”

If the Board of Supervisors doesn’t back the appeal, there may be a court battle on the environmental impact of the shuttle stops, which increase rents and home prices nearby.

Paul Rose, spokesperson for the SFMTA, responded to the complaint in an email to the Guardian.

“We developed this pilot proposal to help ensure the most efficient transportation network possible by reducing Muni delays and further reducing congestion on our roadways,” Rose wrote. “We are confident that the CEQA clearance is appropriate and will be upheld.” (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

Library cracks down on the homeless

The way homeless residents are treated in San Francisco has come under scrutiny lately, with recent reports of homeless individuals being sprayed with hoses by Department of Public Works staff who started doing early-morning sidewalk cleanings nearby Twitter’s mid-Market headquarters.

This week, much discussion has been focused on homeless individuals’ use of the city’s Main Library — and while library administrators say they are just trying to make the facility safe and enjoyable for everyone, advocates have voiced concern that the homeless are being unfairly targeted.

“We want people to use the library from all walks of life,” library spokesperson Michelle Jeffers told the Guardian, saying a new set of proposed policies is not meant to be directed at homeless people in particular.

But it’s difficult to imagine who else would be bathing in the restrooms, for instance, or bringing a shopping cart into the library.

There is even a line in the code of conduct policy that forbids emitting “strong or pervasive odors.” While the policy notes that this could mean perfume, it could also mean body odor.

At a recent meeting, the San Francisco Library Commission considered bulking up security staff and imposing stricter penalties for these violations and others, such as sleeping in the library, asking for money, or bringing carts or luggage into the building.

Under proposed revisions to the library’s “Code of Conduct,” patrons could face tougher penalties for such offenses. (Rebecca Bowe)

Kelly runs in D10

After being narrowly edged out in the race for the District 10 seat on the Board of Supervisors four years ago, Potrero Hill political activist Tony Kelly launch his campaign for the seat Feb. 19, challenging incumbent Malia Cohen.

In 2010, after former Sup. Sophie Maxwell was termed out, the D10 race was a wide open contest that had low voter turnout and the squirreliest ranked-choice voting ending that the city has seen. On election night, former BART director Lynette Sweet finished first, followed by Kelly, a third place tie between Cohen and Marlene Tran, and Potrero Hill View publisher Steve Moss in fourth.

But the strong negative campaigning between Sweet and Moss, the leading fundraisers in the race, allowed the likable but then relatively unknown Cohen to vault into the lead on the strength of second- and third-place votes, finishing a few hundred votes in front of Kelly, who came in second.

Cohen has had an unremarkable tenure on the board, spearheading few significant legislative pushes and being an ideological mixed bag on key votes. But she’ll likely retain the support of African American leaders and voters in Bayview and Hunters Point, and enjoy the always significant advantage of incumbency.

Kelly hopes to turn that advantage into a disadvantage, tying Cohen to City Hall economic development policies that have caused gentrification and displacement. “Too many San Franciscans face an uphill battle, especially here in District 10,” Kelly said in a statement announcing his candidacy. “Our district is part of one of the richest cities in the richest state in the richest country in the world, and yet our neighborhoods are home to the highest unemployment rates in the City, our homeowners are at risk of foreclosure, and our tenants at risk of evictions. This is unacceptable, and we must do better.” (Steven T. Jones)

Obamacare vs. HealthySF

Thousands of Healthy San Francisco enrollees will soon face a dilemma.

Federal health care reform will hold them to the “individual mandate,” a requirement to obtain health insurance — but Healthy San Francisco doesn’t count. Roughly 70 percent of uninsured San Franciscans currently rely upon the city-administered program, created by San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance, to access medical care.

Anyone who doesn’t satisfy the individual mandate will be made to fork over $95 as a penalty — but that noncompliance fee will skyrocket to $625 in 2015.

Meanwhile, people who are eligible for subsidized health insurance under the Affordable Care Act will automatically become ineligible for Healthy San Francisco under current rules, according to San Francisco Department of Public Health Deputy Director of Health Colleen Chawla.

The prospect of becoming suddenly ineligible for Healthy San Francisco will leave thousands of residents in the bind of being unable to rely on the system they now use to access care, while also being unable to afford the new insurance option — and so far, city officials have found no clear resolution to this dilemma.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, who authored the legislation that created Healthy San Francisco as a member of the Board of Supervisors, admonished the Department of Public Health last week for turning away enrollees, conveying to program participants that only those who are undocumented would be eligible to remain in Healthy San Francisco. On Feb. 18, the San Francisco Health Commission approved a temporary solution, signing off on a resolution that creates a “transition period” allowing Healthy San Francisco enrollees to remain in the program until the end of the 2014. (Rebecca Bowe)

SF has fastest growing wealth gap

San Francisco has the second highest gap between the rich and the poor in the United States, according to a new study from the Brookings Institution. The study looked at US Census data across different income levels and ranked cities for not only the widening chasm between the rich and the poor, but also the speed at which that gap increased. Though San Francisco has the second widest income inequality gap (second to Atlanta, where the poor are poorer, but the rich far less rich than here), it’s tops in terms of the speed at which the wealthy are pulling away from the rest of us, the study found. “Not surprisingly, San Francisco experienced the largest increase in its ratio from 2007 to 2012,” the Brookings Institution reported. “Income for its typical 20th-percentile household dropped $4,000 during that period, while income for its typical 95th-percentile household soared by $28,000. No other city saw nearly as large an increase in its rich households’ incomes.” (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

Muni fare shakedown

Michael Redmond

-

February 25, 2014

43

Update: Just a day after the release of this article, advocacy group POWER announced that Google pledged to pay for Free Muni For Youth for two years. “This validates both the success and necessity of the Free Muni for Youth program,”said Bob Allen, leader in the FreeMuni for Youth coalition, in a press release. “We need tech companies in San Francisco and throughout the region to work with the community to support more community-driven solutions to the displacement crisis.”

The funding though is promised only for two years, and when that timeframe is up the question will still remain — will Muni’s operating budget pay for something Mayor Ed Lee could find funding for elsewhere? Additionally, Google hasn’t announced funding for free Muni for seniors or the disabled, another program up for consideration in the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s new budget. That may change if and when it is approved by the SFMTA for the next budget year.

“I think it’s a positive step in the right direction,” Superivsor David Campos, the sponsor of Free Muni For Youth, told us. “But there are still questions about what it means in terms of the long term future of the program. It’s only a two year gift.”

“We have asked for a meeting with Google and the mayor’s office and the coalition to talk about long term plans, to find out more information about what this means.”

There’s a tie that binds all Muni riders. From the well-heeled Marina dwellers who ride the 45 Union to Bayview denizens who board the T-Third Sunnydale line, we’ve all heard the same words broadcast during sleepy morning commutes.

“Please pay your fare share.”

The play on words (also seen on Muni enforcement signage) would be cute if it didn’t perfectly represent how Muni riders may now be stiffed. A slew of new budget ideas hit the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors last week (Feb. 18), and who will pay for it all is an open question.

The first blow to riders is a proposed single-ride fare hike from the current $2 to $2.25.

Other proposals include expanding the Free Muni for Youth program, rolling out a new program offering free Muni for seniors and the disabled, and a fare hike to $6 for the historic F streetcar.

The odorous price jumps (and costly but promising giveaways) are moving forward against a backdrop of a Muni surplus of $22 million, which the board has until April to decide how to use, and a controversial decision by Mayor Ed Lee to make a U-turn on charging for parking on Sundays.

The meter decision would deprive Muni of millions of dollars.

“We’re not proposing anything here, just presenting what we can do,” SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin told the SFMTA board at City Hall last week.

There’s still time to change the SFMTA board’s mind on the proposals between now and final approval of the budget in April. But who will end up paying for a better Muni?

FARE HIKES NOT FOUGHT

In 2010, the SFMTA instituted a policy to raise Muni fares along with inflation and a number of other economic factors, essentially putting them on autopilot. The SFMTA board still has to approve the fee hikes, which may rise across the board.

One-time fares may jump to $2.25. Muni’s monthly passes would see an increase by $2 next year and more the following year. The “M” monthly pass will be $70 and the “A” pass (which allows Muni riders to ride BART inside San Francisco) will be $81.

Muni needs the money, Reiskin said.

“To not have (fares) escalate as fuel and health care costs increase, you can’t just leave one chunk of your revenues flat,” he told the Guardian. Muni’s operating budget will expand from $864 million this year to $958 million in 2016. “Salary and benefit growth is the biggest driver of that,” Reiskin said.

Mario Tanev, spokesperson for the San Francisco Transit Riders Union, said the hike was expected.

“We’re not necessarily against the inflation increase,” he said. “But though the parking fines SFMTA levies are inflation adjusted, other rates (against drivers) are not. There are many things in our society that disincentivize transit and incentivize driving.”

Drivers enjoy heavy subsidies to their lifestyle on the federal, state, and local levels, from parking lot construction, the cost of gasoline, and now it seems, renewed free Sunday parking meters. The new fare increases are hitting transit riders just as the mayor is poised to yank funding from Muni to put in the pockets of drivers.

PLAYING POLITICS

When the paid Sunday meter pilot began in early 2013, it was a rare flip in a city that often treats Muni like a piggy bank: money was floated from drivers and dropped onto the laps of transit.

A report from SFMTA issued December 2013 hailed it as a success for drivers as well: Finding parking spaces in commercial areas on Sundays became 15 percent easier, the study found, and the time an average driver spent circling for a space decreased by minutes.

Even some in the business community call it a success, since a higher parking turnover translates to more customers shopping.

Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of public policy at the Chamber of Commerce, is a supporter of the paid Sunday meters. “You can drive into merchant areas now where you couldn’t before,” he told us.

Eliminating Sunday meter fees would punch a $9.6 million hole in Muni’s budget next year, by SFMTA’s account.

The timing couldn’t be worse. On the flip side the Free Muni for Youth program, which targets low-income youth in San Francisco, may expand next year at an estimated cost of about $3.6 million, and a program to offer free Muni for the elderly and disabled would cost between $4 and $6 million — close to the same the same amount that would be lost by the meter giveback.

BOOSTING SAN FRANCISCO FAMILIES

“As an 18-year-old in high school it was a struggle to get to school, it was a struggle to find 75 cents or two dollars to get home,” Tina Sataraka, 19, told the SFMTA board last week. As a Balboa High School student, Sataraka had a 30-minute commute from the Bayview. She’s not alone.

A study by the San Francisco Budget & Legislative Analyst’s office found that 31,000 youth who faced similar financial hurdles had signed up for the Free Muni for Youth pilot program, a resounding success in a city where the youth population is dwindling. Authored by Sup. David Campos, the program may redefine “youth” to include 18-year-olds, who are often still in high school.

But initial grant funding for the program has dried up, so now Muni will foot the bill.

Not one to say “I told you so,” Sup. Scott Wiener said there were reasons for objecting to the program a year ago.

“My biggest, fundamental objection to the program was less that they were giving free fares to kids, and more that they were taking it out of Muni’s operating budget,” Wiener told us. “They need to find a way to pay for it, perhaps from the General Fund, and not just taking the easy and lazy way out.”

The Budget & Legislative Analyst recommended several options for alternative funding: special taxes on private shuttle buses (Google buses), or an increased vehicle license fee specially earmarked for the youth bus program. So far, Mayor Ed Lee hasn’t shown an interest.

“There haven’t been discussions of having the Board of Supervisors fund free Muni for youth,” Reiskin told us. The same goes for the mayor. And though Reiskin was cautious and political about the possibility of Sunday meters becoming free again, he didn’t sound happy about it.

“As for what’s behind [the mayor’s] call for free Sunday parking, that didn’t come from us,” Reiskin told us. “That came from him.”

NOVEMBER RISKS

Mayor Lee’s office didn’t answer our emails, but politicos, including Wiener and Chronicle bromance Matier and Ross, indicated the mayor may be reversing on Sunday parking meters to appease the driving voter electorate.

There are two measures up on the November ballot, and one is aimed right at drivers’ wallets.

The two measures, a $1 billion vehicle license fee hike, and a $500 million transportation bond, are both aimed at shoring up the SFMTA’s capital budget. An October poll paid for by the mayor showed 44 percent of San Franciscans in favor of a vehicle fee hike, and 50 percent against, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Reiskin said the loss of those two ballot measures would be crippling to Muni’s future.

“The improvements we’re trying to make to make Muni more reliable, more attractive, those won’t happen. This is our funding source for that,” he said.

The mayor is busy smoothing the potholes towards the bonds’ success in the November election, but it seems he’s willing to pile costs onto Muni and its riders to do it.

Correction 2/26: An editing error led to the erroneous calculation of Free Muni For Youth at near $9 million. Free Muni For Youth is only estimated to cost the SFMTA $3.6 million. It is the combination of Free Muni For Youth and free Muni for the disabled and elderly that equal about $9 million.

Activists, union challenge Google bus pilot program

Erica Hanna

-

February 19, 2014

73

Activists, union challenge Google bus pilot program

San Francisco activists and labor filed an appeal of the controversial commuter shuttle (aka, the Google buses) pilot program to the Board of Supervisors today, alleging it was pushed through without a proper environmental review.

The appeal was filed by a coalition of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, SEIU 1021, The League of Pissed Off Voters, and Sara Shortt of the Housing Rights Committee.

The shuttles, mostly to Silicon Valley tech firms, pick up passengers in Muni bus stops. The use of public bus stops would incur a $271 fine for private autos, and often do, but the shuttles have largely received a free pass from the city. Last month, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency approved of a pilot plan hatched behind closed doors that allows use of 200 bus stops by the private shuttles, charging only $1 per stop, per day.

The appeal alleges that the program needed review under the California Environmental Quality Act, which asks for projects to be analyzed for, among other things, land use, housing, and public health impacts.

“CEQA actually identifies displacement as an environmental impact,” attorney Richard Drury, who filed the appeal on behalf of the coalition, told us. “Almost no one knows that. Honestly I didn’t know that, until I started researching all of this.”

If the Board of Supervisors doesn’t back the appeal, there may be a court battle on the environmental impact of the shuttle stops, which increase rents and home prices nearby.

Paul Rose, spokeserpson for the SFMTA, responded to the complaint in an email to the Guardian.

“We developed this pilot proposal to help ensure the most efficient transportation network possible by reducing Muni delays and further reducing congestion on our roadways,” Rose wrote. “We are confident that the CEQA clearance is appropriate and will be upheld.”

In the meantime, Drury told us, the coalition is performing environmental research of its own. It has experts from the US Environmental Protection Agency and other organizations analyzing diesel outputs from the shuttles, as well as the impact of shuttles on displacement.

“CEQA review needs to have a review before they start the pilot, not after,” Drury said. “They’re basically doing it backwards: let’s have 200 stops and 35,000 people in the service, and figure out what happens.”

Some studies conducted already show that affluence rises wherever the shuttle stops are placed. One by Chris Walker, a 29 year old in Mumbai, India, shows rising property values in and around the Google bus stops from 2011 to 2013.

This heatmap shows a rise in property values appreciated near shuttle stops.

“We see the Google Bus as a part of a larger effort to privatize public spaces and services, displacing both current residents and the public transportation system we rely on,” said Alysabeth Alexander, Vice President of SEIU Local 1021, in a statement. “San Francisco has a long history and tradition as a union town. With the tech takeover, San Francisco is becoming inhospitable to working class families. Our wages are stagnant, as the cost of everything is skyrocketing. This is a shame.”

Who influenced the Google-bus policy?

Michael Redmond

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February 18, 2014

7

On SFBG.com last week, we published a list of the attendees (and corporate affiliations) who were recorded as having attended stakeholder meetings with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to discuss that private shuttle pilot program that caused such a dustup last month. The list is a matter of public record and was submitted to the Bay Guardian by a source who wished to remain anonymous.

Google was in the room, of course, but not all attendees were affiliated with corporate shuttle providers who bus employees to their workplaces. One company, called Leap Transit, has started a private luxury bus in San Francisco that is not affiliated with any particular employer.

“Our buses are clean and our staff is friendly,” according to Leap’s website. “Sip your morning coffee in peace.” (Leap did not respond to our request for an interview about its future plans.)

Another participant who seemed a bit far afield from the transportation sector was a representative from TMG Partners, a real-estate developer. Also included in the meeting was a representative from a law firm called Morrison Foerster which has represented major tech investors such as Kleiner Perkins, according to its website, which can be found at mofo.com.

How did these individuals manage to get invites? We emailed SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose to ask that question. He told us, “When we started the work, we received a set of shuttle sector contacts from the [San Francisco County Transportation Authority], who started looking at this issue. One of the first things we did was reach out to these companies and confirm the right contact people. We also reached out to companies who we’d heard had shuttles.”

He added, “Over time, additional shuttle service providers and companies that offer shuttles for their employees contacted the agency to let us know that they were either providing service or considering to provide shuttle service and wanted to know about our policy development process. This also grew our list. And, as we heard about new shuttle programs, we reached out the companies to make contact. Also, at meetings with shuttle providers, we also asked if there were other providers we should include. Some members of the shuttle sector brought their legal or PR reps with them to the meetings — they were not on our list.”

The price of growth

Michael Redmond

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February 18, 2014

20

joe@sfbg.com

San Francisco is booming, but will its infrastructure be able to keep up with its population growth?

The problem is acutely illustrated in the southeast part of San Francisco, where long-stalled development plans were finally greenlit by the adoption of the Eastern Neighborhoods Community Plan a few years ago.

The Mission, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, and Mission Bay districts have attracted more attention from developers than any other sector of San Francisco, according to the Planning Department. Bayview and Hunters Point are also now attracting lots of investment and building by developers.

But when development projects don’t pay the full cost of the infrastructure needed to serve those new residents — which is often the case in San Francisco and throughout California, with its Prop. 13 cap on property tax increases — then that burden gets passed on the rest of us.

Mayor Ed Lee’s recent call to build 30,000 new housing units by 2020 and the dollar sign lures of waterfront development have pressed the gas pedal on construction, while giving short shrift to corresponding questions about how the serve that growth.

Infrastructure needs — such as roads, public transit, parks, and the water and sewer systems — aren’t as sexy as other issues. But infrastructure is vital to creating a functional city.

That kind of planning (or lack thereof) impacts traffic congestion, public safety, and the overall livability of the city. And right now, the eastern neighborhoods alone face a funding gap as high as $274 million, according to city estimates highlighted by area Sup. Malia Cohen.

That’s why Cohen went looking for help, though that’s not exactly what she found.

MEETING DEMAND

Cohen has asked Mayor Lee about the lack of adequate investment in critical infrastructure again and again. She asked his staffers, she asked his aides. At the Feb. 11 Board of Supervisors meeting, during the mayor’s question time, she was determined to ask one more time.

Cohen asked the mayor about how to fund infrastructure needs in the eastern neighborhoods and whether the city should use a new, rarely used fundraising option called an Infrastructure Financing District, or IFD.

“When the city adopted the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, we were aware of a significant funding gap that existed for infrastructure improvement,” she said to the mayor. She asked if he would slow down development while the city caught up with infrastructure improvements, or commit more funding.

Cohen asked pointedly, “Would you support an IFD for the eastern neighborhoods?”

The mayor’s answer was in the foreign language known as bureaucratese, offering a firm “only if we have to.”

“Strategically planning for growth means making long-term investments in infrastructure,” he said. “And the most important thing that we can do right now is to work together to place and pass two new revenue generating bonds measures on the November 2014 ballot.”

But his proposed $500 million general obligation bond and $1 billion local vehicle license fee increase would just go to citywide transportation projects, where the city faces $6 billion in capital needs over the next 15 years, according to a task force formed by the mayor.

That’s small comfort for the people of the eastern neighborhoods, who are already ill-served by Muni and will have other needs as well. It’s a situation likely to get worse as the population there increases, unless the city finds a way to make serious new investments.

CITY VS. NEIGHBORHOOD

Development impact fees go to the city’s General Fund, paying for the planning work, building inspections, and a share of citywide infrastructure improvements. The problem with that strategy, opponents say, is that there are then no promises that the money will make its way back to the neighborhood that generated the funding in the first place.

Neighborhood advocates see a need to address the problems created by new development by capturing fees before they get to the General Fund. IFDs do just that. Though the nuts and bolts of how an IFD works are complex, the gist is this: Once implemented, an IFD sets up a special area in a neighborhood where a portion of developer impact fees are captured to exclusively fund infrastructure where the development is.

“So the idea that growth should pay for growth was the notion,” Tom Radulovich, executive director of the nonprofit group Livable City, told us. But with money flowing into the General Fund rather than being earmarked for specific neighborhoods, Radulovich said, “the infrastructure is going to come much later than the development. (The city) delivers projects slowly, if at all.”

IFDs are largely untested in California, and have only one recent use in San Francisco, on Rincon Hill, where a deal with developers cut by then-Sup. Chris Daly has morphed into an IFD created by his successor, Sup. Jane Kim. The neighborhood will now see new funding, and a new park, as a result of development there.

“This is a HUGE step towards getting the public infrastructure improvements needed to correct livability deficiencies in Rincon Hill,” read a newsletter from the Rincon Hill Neighborhood Association in 2011. “What does this mean for those of us living (here)? It means the Caltrans property at 333 Harrison Street has a short future as a commuter parking lot, because the front portion will become our first neighborhood park.”

The benefits are tangible, but putting an IFD into action is onerous. California Senate documents describe the hurdles involved: The county (or city) needs an infrastructure plan, it must hold public hearings, every local agency that will contribute property tax revenue must approve the plan, and the IFD needs to go to ballot and obtain two-thirds voter approval, a high mountain to climb.

Gov. Jerry Brown has called for lowering the voter threshold for IFDs to 55 percent in his newest budget. The mayor used the governor’s rationale as reason to avoid an IFD for the eastern neighborhoods when speaking on the topic last week. But that may not be his only reason.

“Even if we get the changes that we seek, it’s important to point out that IFDs don’t create more money for our city, they fund specific capital improvements by earmarking money in the General Fund for a particular purpose,” Lee said.

In other words, IFDs take money from a city that is already wrestling with underfunded citywide infrastructure needs. “Earmarking general funds isn’t something that we do lightly,” Lee told Cohen.

But Peter Cohen, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, put it this way to us: “Should the eastern neighborhoods be the cash cow for the General Fund?”

BOOMTOWN

With more than 10,000 housing entitlements, the eastern neighborhoods are where San Francisco will experience its biggest growing pangs.

“The eastern neighborhoods are ground zero for development in San Francisco,” Keith Goldstein, a long time member of the Eastern Neighborhoods Citizens Advisory Committee, told a Nov. 14 Board of Supervisors Government Oversight Committee hearing on the issue.

Sups. Cohen and David Campos spent the majority of the meeting trying to find solutions, but none were forthcoming. Instead they were met with presentations on the neighborhood’s myriad needs, but few on how they would be funded.

Muni is also starved for resources in the area, where the T-line is notorious for its “switchbacks” that leave riders stranded before completing its run.

“This is a topic I’ve advocated a lot,” Sup. Scott Wiener told us. “When you have a growing population, these folks absolutely have to have service.”

At the meeting, Planning Director John Rahaim put the problem simply: “There’s a lack of development fee funding.” The officials that day from the SFMTA, Planning Department, and the Department of Public Works presented plans that relied heavily on state and federal funding to meet the new construction and infrastructure needs, a funding gap of $274 million.

“We’re really struggling to maintain the infrastructure the city has,” Brian Strong, director of capital planning, said at the meeting. “For the General Fund itself, we’re deferring $3.9 billion in capital projects the city deemed high priority. We just don’t have the funds.”

The Mayor’s Office didn’t respond to our questions about how to solve the problem, but Sup. Cohen said she’s hopeful he’ll support an IFD in her district.

“When we introduced the plan five years ago, we knew there was a gap in terms of what we expected to collect. In terms of development impact fees, we’re still in that place,” she told us. “I just want to get shit done.”

One report seems to agree with Cohen on the importance of IFDs. In 2009, a major report on development in the eastern neighborhoods was filed to then-Mayor Gavin Newsom. It recommended the city “commission a consultant study to inform the formation of an IFD,” saying it was the best tool available to fund infrastructure in the eastern districts.

The top signature on the report belonged to then-City Administrator Ed Lee. Now that he’s mayor, a mayor calling for rapid growth, can he find a way to pay for the infrastructure to serve those new residents?

Here’s who attended those SFMTA meetings about the private shuttle program

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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February 13, 2014

17

Here’s who attended those SFMTA meetings about the private shuttle program

Here is a list of the attendees (and corporate affiliations) who were recorded as having attended stakeholder meetings with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to discuss that private shuttle pilot program that caused such a dustup last month. The list is a matter of public record and was submitted to the Bay Guardian by a source who wished to remain anonymous.

Google was in the room, of course, but not all attendees were affiliated with corporate shuttle providers who bus employees to their workplaces. One company, called Leap Transit, has started a private luxury bus in San Francisco that is not affiliated with any particular employer.

“Our buses are clean and our staff is friendly,” according to Leap’s website. “Sip your morning coffee in peace.” (Leap did not respond to our request for an interview about its future plans.)

Another participant who seemed a bit far afield from the transportation sector was a representative from TMG Partners, a real-estate developer. Also included in the meeting was a representative from a law firm called Morrison Foerster which has represented major tech investors such as Kleiner Perkins, according to its website, which can be found at mofo.com.

How did these individuals manage to get invites? We emailed SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose to ask that question, and here is what he said in response.

“When we started the work, we received a set of shuttle sector contacts from the [San Francisco County Transportation Authority], who started looking at this issue. One of the first things we did was reach out to these companies and confirm the right contact people. We also reached out to companies who we’d heard had shuttles.”

He added, “Over time, additional shuttle service providers and companies that offer shuttles for their employees contacted the agency to let us know that they were either providing service or considering to provide shuttle service and wanted to know about our policy development process. This also grew our list. And, as we heard about new shuttle programs, we reached out the companies to make contact. Also, at meetings with shuttle providers, we also asked if there were other providers we should include. Some members of the shuttle sector brought their legal or PR reps with them to the meetings – they were not on our list.”

Broken bodies, broken lives

Michael Redmond

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January 28, 2014

42

Motorists driving for rideshare companies have struck and also killed pedestrians in San Francisco, even since state regulations were adopted to make these new transportation businesses safer and more accountable to the public.

Four months after the new rules were created, lawsuits from these incidents reveal that the new regulations contain gaping holes that continue to place passengers, pedestrians, and even drivers at risk.

One recent local story actually started in 2004 in Florida’s Monroe County. A vehicle sped down the Overseas highway at over 100mph. Ever seen the movie The Fast and the Furious? It was like that.

In the Florida heat, the car blazed by palm trees and an ocean view, hell bent for Miami. It accelerated as it took a curve, swerving around two vehicles going half its speed. Brazenly passing a traffic control device, the car cut off one more vehicle, then another, and another. Still barreling over 100mph, the driver swerved across the double yellow lines, forcing an oncoming vehicle to veer off the highway.

A traffic snarl put an end to the thrill ride. According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office incident report, which the Guardian obtained through a records request, driver Syed Muzzafar was accompanied by his wife and three children during his death-defying drive. He told the police officer, “This was just a dumb thing to do. I know I’m wrong.”

Muzzafar was booked for reckless driving. Nine years later, he would be booked again in San Francisco for hitting a family as they crossed the street in the Tenderloin.

On New Year’s Eve 2013, picking up fares for the tech company Uber, Muzzafar’s car struck young Sofia Liu, her mother, Huan Kuang, and brother, Anthony Liu. Six-year-old Sofia did not survive. Her family filed a wrongful death suit against Uber on Jan. 27, and will be represented by attorney Christopher Dolan.

Uber is part of an emerging cast of companies commonly known as rideshares, now legally called Transportation Network Companies (TNCs). The gist of how they operate is this: the company’s mobile app connects a driver with a customer, much like a taxi dispatch. Only a few years old, the TNCs initially operated in a wild west, devoid of regulation. But the California Public Utilities Commission passed rules for TNCs in September with the aim of protecting pedestrians, passengers, and drivers in collisions.

Uber, formed in 2009, has drivers in over 50 cities worldwide and an estimated worth of just over $3 billion, according to leaked evaluations. But Uber may still be in need of a version 2.0.

The death of the young Sofia Liu, killed by a driver already arrested for reckless driving, shows the state still has a long way to go on the road to regulating rideshares.

NOT MY PROBLEM

The night Muzzafar struck the Liu family, he was ferrying customers using the Uber app — but the company disavowed responsibility for the incident.

“We thank law enforcement for the quick release of information,” Uber wrote in a blog post the day after Sofia Liu died. “We can confirm that the driver in question was a partner of Uber and that we have deactivated his Uber account. The driver was not providing services on the Uber system during the time of the accident.”

But that’s a half-truth: Muzzafar was picking up passengers for Uber all night, but because he’d just dropped off a customer, he allegedly ceased being an Uber driver. With no passengers in the vehicle, Uber did not consider him “on the Uber system.”

If that sounds like a giant loophole, you’d be right — but it’s a legal one, for now.

The new CPUC regulations specify that TNCs must only provide liability insurance when drivers are “in service.” The Taxicab Paratransit Association of California is suing to modify those rules, saying the meaning of “in service” was never defined — and they allege this wording allows companies to disavow responsibility for a driver not carrying passengers at the moment of an accident.

This gaping loophole can also lead to insurance and liability consequences.

“I would guess that’s on the order of a $20 million liability case,” Christiane Hayashi, director of Taxi services at the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency, said of Liu’s death. “The question is, who is going to pay for it?”

Muzzafar, and not Uber, may be on the fiscal hook, even though it’s unlikely he could cover the family’s medical and legal fees on his own.

Though much reporting has focused on TNC drivers’ lack of insurance, the collision that killed Sofia Liu on New Year’s Eve raises other questions as well. Just how did a driver with a reckless driving record manage to become a partner with Uber in the first place?

Checking out drivers

The recently drafted CPUC regulations require the TNCs to carry out background checks, a key element for safety. As it turns out, not all background checks are made equal.

Uber hired a private company called Hirease to conduct its checks, the Guardian learned in emails obtained from drivers. While Hirease requires Uber drivers to fill out a form with their personal information, taxi drivers who must register with the city’s transportation agency are screened with fingerprinting, Hayashi from the SFMTA told us.

The fingerprint checks make use of the FBI’s national criminal database, something a company like Hirease lacks access to (since it isn’t a government agency). We called the FBI’s background check department, based in West Virginia, to better understand the two methods.

We spoke to a rank and file employee, not a spokesperson, so he declined to give his name. The FBI employee spoke with a twang, and clearly laid out the problems.

The first snag with private background checks are false positives from common names (like John Smith) or stolen identities, he said.

Self-identification is also a problem. “If you’re a criminal, you’re not going to use your information,” the FBI employee said. “What if you were a lady and you were married six times, which name will you use for a background check? Bottom line, fingerprints are exclusive. Names are not.”

Another flaw is that while background checks performed for entities like the SFMTA make use of a federal database that dates back 100 years, California law doesn’t allow private background checks to go beyond seven years — and Muzzafar’s reckless driving arrest was nine years ago.

“Uber works with Hirease to conduct stringent background checks,” Uber spokesperson Andrew Noyes wrote to us via email. “This driver (Muzzafar) had a clean background check when he became an Uber partner.”

Hirease and Uber did what they legally could, but the summation of laws and regulations blinded Uber to Muzzafar’s background — and nothing in the new CPUC regulations would have prevented this. That may go a long way toward explaining how a man caught recklessly driving with his own family in the car in Florida was driving for Uber the night he allegedly struck and killed a child.

Importantly, California law does allow for a taxi driver to have one reckless driving incident, or one count of driving under the influence, on his or her record. But as Hayashi told us, stricter background checks make it easier for taxi companies to spot a red flag before making hiring decisions.

The relative insecurity of private background checks raises an unsettling question: How many others with reckless driving records or DUIs drive for TNC companies like Uber, Sidecar, and Lyft without the companies’ knowledge?

The results of a collision can be severe, as San Francisco’s tragic New Year’s eve incident demonstrates. But even those who survive are left with bills that Uber, allegedly, isn’t paying.

PAYING NO ONE

Last September, Jason Herrera and Nikolas Kolintzas summoned an Uber driver via smartphone, intending to hop from Valencia Street to the Marina district. Driver Bassim Elbatniji responded, and drove the pair down Octavia, where his Prius collided with a Camry.

Herrera suffered a concussion and was knocked unconscious. Kolintzas also suffered a concussion, and they both sustained injuries to their necks and backs, according to court documents.

But when the two sought financial assistance from Uber to cover their medical costs, Uber said it was the driver’s responsibility.

“As far as Uber’s concerned, their insurance isn’t providing any of this,” attorney Colleen Li told the Guardian. Li is representing Kolintzas and Herrera in their suit against Uber, which seeks damages to cover their medical bills, which reached “tens of thousands” of dollars, Li told us.

According to a policy published on Uber’s website, the company maintains a $1 million “per incident insurance policy applicable to ridesharing trips,” which is in keeping with requirements under the new CPUC regulations.

Nevertheless, Uber has not stepped up to cover damages in response to a lawsuit arising from a similar incident. Months ago, the Guardian reported on the case of an Uber driver who hit a fire hydrant, which flew through the air and struck Claire Fahrbach, a barista living in San Francisco (“Lawsuit over injury from airborne fire hydrant tests Uber’s insurance practices,” 8/8/13). She sustained lacerations to her body, a fracture in her lower leg, and multiple herniated discs, according to her lawsuit against Uber.

Her medical bills and injuries destroyed her dreams of living in San Francisco, and she moved home with her parents in North Carolina to recover. Her lawyer, Doug Atkinson, told us Uber still hasn’t paid for his client’s medical services.

“They’re still denying they have any liability for the driver,” he said. “They said they wouldn’t fight the CPUC ruling, but in our case they obviously are.”

But the hydrant also sprouted a geyser that flooded a nearby business, Rare Device, and the apartment building above it. “It was horrible. Our store flooded, we lost a bunch of inventory,” Rare Device’s owner, Giselle Gyalzen, told us.

Her insurance covered the damage, but she’s still trying to recover the deductible from Uber.

Uber directed the lawyers to its terms of service, which tell people up front that they won’t cover anything: “Uber under no circumstance accepts liability in connection with and/or arising from the transportation services provided by the Transportation Provider or any acts, action, behavior, conduct, and/or negligence on the part of the Transportation Provider.”

Meanwhile, the drivers also find themselves in a bind when it comes to obtaining insurance. Given the lack of clarity, state agencies have opted to alert TNC drivers that they’re going without a safety net.

On its website, the California Department of Insurance posted a notice warning, “TNCs are not required to have medical payments coverage, comprehensive, collision, uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage or other optional coverages.” It goes on to explain that TNCs’ liability policies aren’t required to cover bodily injury to the drivers, damages to the drivers’ cars, or damage and injuries caused by an uninsured or underinsured motorist.

And as the Guardian previously reported (“Driven to Take Risks,” 8/6/13), rideshare drivers don’t qualify for commercial insurance since their vehicles are registered as private automobiles, yet insurance companies won’t grant complete insurance coverage to TNC drivers since it’s considered an insufficient safeguard against risk.

Notably, limo drivers who also work for Uber (and get commercial insurance through those companies) don’t have this problem — just those using Uber or other rideshare apps as independent contractors. Taxi drivers are also eligible for commercial coverage.

Is there any way for an independent TNC driver to legally insure him/herself on the road? “Not that I’m aware of,” said Patrick Storm, a spokesperson for the Department of Insurance.

FIXING SAFETY

Paul Marron is an attorney for the Taxicab Paratransit Association of California, the group suing the CPUC to tighten up its regulations. In his view, a key test of the new CPUC regulations is whether they’re enforced — and with a bare bones staff, enforcement is likely to be anemic.

“The CPUC does not have the adequate resources to regulate (transportation) safety statewide,” he told us.

As a lawyer for taxi interests competing against rideshares, Marron obviously has skin in the game, so we looked at the numbers.

We compared the staff counts of the SFMTA, the CPUC, and for some perspective, the New York City Taxi Commission.

The SFMTA has 15 employees who oversee San Francisco’s 1,850 taxi cabs. That’s one staff person for every 123 cabs in the city. The NYC Taxi Commission’s staff of 569 oversees 94,500 taxis, town cars and similar liveries, according to their posted annual report. Though the numbers are greater than San Francisco, the ratio is similar: One staff person for every 166 vehicles.

Now for the CPUC. Though it is now tasked with overseeing “rideshare” TNC vehicles, the agency is also responsible for regulating limos and town cars statewide. Public documents obtained by the Guardian show it oversees 1,900 liveries in the Bay Area, and though there are no official numbers, there are an estimated 3,000 rideshare drivers in the city, according to data compiled by the San Francisco Cab Driver’s Association.

The CPUC has a staff of six based in San Francisco, responsible for overseeing an estimated 4,900 vehicles. That leaves the CPUC with one staffer for every 700 vehicles, a ratio wildly out of sync with other vehicle safety regulators.

Hayashi pleaded with the CPUC to allow cities to regulate rideshares on the local level, saying, “You don’t even have the resources to monitor this stuff.”

Sup. Eric Mar met repeatedly with the SFMTA over these concerns, and will hold a February hearing to get to the heart of the safety culture around San Francisco’s TNC rideshares.

CPUC spokesperson Christopher Chow defended its safety regulations and enforcement. “We can clarify or modify our TNC requirements, if needed, particularly the insurance requirements, as we see how the TNCs attempt to comply with the decision’s directives,” Chow wrote in an email. “If we believe there are any issues that should be addressed, we will take action.”

But as things stand, Claire Fahrbach, Giselle Gyalzen, Jason Herrera, Nikolas Kolintas and the family of Sofia Liu are all waiting for that action.

Reed Nelson contributed to this report.

SFMTA approves tech shuttle plan

Michael Redmond

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January 28, 2014

8

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors approved a pilot program Jan. 21 that allows operators of private commuter shuttles to use public bus stops, something they’ve been doing illegally for years on a very predictable basis.

The program will establish an “approved network” of 200 designated San Francisco stops where private shuttles may pick up and drop off passengers. It will issue permits and identifying placards to the private buses and require them to adhere to certain set of rules, like yielding to Muni buses if they approach the stop at the same time. (There’s already a Curb Priority Law stating that any vehicles not operated by Muni will be fined $271 for blocking a bus zone. But the city has chosen to ignore that law when it comes to private commuter shuttles.)

Finally, the program will charge shuttle operators $1 per stop per day, which seeks to cover the costs of the program implementation and no more. The meeting drew a very high turnout that included the protesters who have been blockading the buses, Google employees, private commuter shuttle drivers, and residents of various San Francisco neighborhoods.

Sup. Scott Wiener said at the meeting he was fully supportive of the pilot program, which was developed over the course of many months in collaboration with tech companies who operate the shuttles.

“These shuttles are providing a valuable service,” Wiener said. He said he was sensitive to widespread “frustration and anxiety” around the high cost of housing and rising evictions, but thought it was unfair to blame tech workers: “We need to stop demonizing these shuttles and these tech workers.”

Then Sup. David Campos addressed the board. “I think it’s really important for us to have a dialogue to find common ground,” Campos said, adding that pushing shuttle riders into private automobiles was not a good outcome. But he also urged the SFMTA board to send the proposal back to the drawing board: “It’s a proposal that simply does not go far enough.”

Campos was also critical of the SFMTA’s process of studying the growing private shuttle problem for years and drafting a proposal in collaboration with members of the tech community, with Campos pointing out, “Public input is being sought after the fact.”

Bus plan ignores real cost

Many community members have criticized the new $1 per stop tech shuttle fee as being too low, but city officials say their hands are tied by a state law prohibiting them from charging any more than that.

Yet under Proposition 218 — the state law that limits local governments’ ability to impose new fees — the city has more discretion about how to calculate “cost recovery” than officials have let on.

“Prop. 218 is part of a legal scheme that doesn’t so much limit how we calculate cost recovery,” San Francisco City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Gabriel Zitrin told us, “but limits the city to cost recovery.”

At the Jan. 21 SFMTA meeting, Project Manager Carli Paine explained how her team had arrived at the $1 per stop, per day fee amount.

“We identified everything it would take to implement this program,” Paine said. After identifying all the program components, the agency “took the number of stop events and came up with a ‘per stop event’ cost…The kinds of costs we included are upfront costs, ongoing program costs.”

Under Prop. 218, however, the SFMTA could determine whether there are other costs associated with allowing private commuter shuttles to use public transportation infrastructure, beyond just the cost of issuing and enforcing permits and placards.

Zitrin said the city can identify any costs not already being recovered elsewhere. If shuttles’ use of public bus stops cause transit delays, for instance, what are the costs associated with those delays? More overtime pay for bus drivers?

Low-income kids getting to school late and missing breakfast? What’s the cost of that?

If rents rise in neighborhoods located along the shuttle routes (and studies show they do), what are the associated costs of that phenomenon? What’s the cost of displacement resulting from those higher rents?

“Tale of two Davids” elevates Campos

Michael Redmond

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January 28, 2014

4

David Campos presented “a tale of two Davids” Jan. 23 in his first debate with David Chiu in their race to replace Assemblymember Tom Ammiano in AD17, contrasting his solid progressive record against Chiu’s more pragmatic approach. Chiu reinforced the narrative by repeatedly touting his “effectiveness” and record at City Hall.

So the question that may decide the race is whether the corporate-friendly “jobs agenda” that Chiu has pursued with Mayor Ed Lee — an approach that is now triggering a political backlash as evictions and gentrification rage — is popular with voters. It wasn’t with the San Francisco Young Democrats, which sponsored the debate in the Main Library tonight and then voted to endorse Campos.

Campos brought the fire from the beginning, chiding Chiu for his chummy relationship with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and offering English and Spanish translations of the saying, “Tell me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Chiu tried to focus on his record and political skills — “We need an Assembly person who is effective at getting things done,” Chiu said — but he seemed weary and thrown off balance by Campos’ well-delivered ideological jabs.

“I’m surprised as a tenant you would support the demolition of 1500 rent-controlled units at Parkmerced,” Campos said after Chiu identified with struggling renters. And when Chiu touted the condo conversion moratorium deal he cut, Campos said, “There doesn’t have to be a lobbying effort by tenant groups to get me to do the right thing.”

As Chiu listed his legislative accomplishments, Campos said, ” I have a different definition of effectiveness,” criticizing Chiu for supporting Twitter’s $22 million tax break and other pro-business policies.

Chiu finally got testy and defensive, accusing Campos of also taking money from developers and corporations and with practicing divisive politics. “I do think the people in San Francisco are stick of these attacks,” Chiu said, and then indignantly offering, “I’m in nobody’s pocket.”

But Campos maintained both his narrative and his composure, calling Chiu out for crafting a watered-down alternative to Campos’ legislation requiring restaurants to comply with the Health Care Security Ordinance in paying for their employees’ health coverage and ensuring all surcharges tacked onto customers’ bill go to employees.

“You co-sponsored [the Campos legislation] then changed your mind when the Chamber told you,” Campos said.

When moderator Marisa Lagos from the Chronicle asked the two candidates whether they supported the deal that Mayor Lee cut with tech companies to charge $1 per bus stop for the “Google buses,” which the SFMTA board rubber-stamped this week, Chiu said, “I don’t think $1 per stop is enough.”

Campos pounced, citing Chiu’s support for the deal and quotes in a press release that the Mayor’s Office put out and his absence from the SFMTA meeting where Campos publicly called for a better deal for the city. “It’s one thing to say it here and it’s another thing to say it at City Hall,” Campos said, continuing the offensive by returning to Chiu’s sponsorship of the Twitter tax break, which disappeared from Chiu’s campaign page as the issue has turned toxic recently. “I think you know that was a mistake,” Campos said.

Chiu didn’t respond, choosing instead to emphasize the contrast between his insider role at City Hall and Campos’ identification with the activists. “I’m trying to work behind the scenes and get things done, he’s grandstanding before the cameras,” Chiu said.

Campos extended his “tale of two Davids” narrative, charging that there are two David Chius: the candidate first elected with progressive support in 2008, and the calculating politician who works with the moderates and the business community to advance his interests.

“Which David Chiu is going to go to Sacramento?” Campos asked.

Chiu tried to bridge the gulf between his progressive and pragmatic selves: “In 2008 I said I believed it’s progressive for us to be creating jobs and building housing.” Campos used his closing to say, “This campaign is about taking our city back, it’s about protecting the heart of San Francisco.”

“Tale of Two Davids” casts Campos as the progressive hero

Sasha Cuttler

-

January 23, 2014

123

“Tale of Two Davids” casts Campos as the progressive hero

David Campos presented “a tale of two Davids” tonight [Thu/23] in his first debate with David Chiu in their race to replace Assemblymember Tom Ammiano in AD17, contrasting his solid progressive record against Chiu’s more pragmatic approach. Chiu reinforced the narrative by repeatedly touting his “effectiveness” and record at City Hall.

So the question that may decide the race is whether the corporate-friendly “jobs agenda” that Chiu has pursued with Mayor Ed Lee – an approach that is now triggering a political backlash as evictions and gentrification rage – is popular with voters. It wasn’t with the San Francisco Young Democrats, which sponsored the debate in the Main Library tonight and then voted to endorse Campos.

Campos brought the fire from the beginning, chiding Chiu for his chummy relationship with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and offering English and Spanish translations of the saying, “Tell me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Chiu tried to focus on his record and political skills – “We need an Assembly person who is effective at getting things done,” Chiu said – but he seemed weary and thrown off balance by Campos’ well-delivered ideological jabs.

“I’m surprised as a tenant you would support the demolition of 1500 rent-controlled units at Parkmerced,” Campos said after Chiu identified with struggling renters. And when Chiu touted the condo conversion moratorium deal he cut, Campos said, “There doesn’t have to be a lobbying effort by tenant groups to get me to do the right thing.”

As Chiu listed his legislative accomplishments, Campos said it was important to “draw a line in the sand” against the powerful corporate interests that hold sway in City Hall these days. “ I have a different definition of effectiveness,” Campos said, criticizing Chiu for supporting Twitter’s $22 million tax break.

Chiu finally got testy and defensive, accusing Campos of also taking money from developers and corporations and with practicing divisive politics. “I do think the people in San Francisco are stick of these attacks,” Chiu said, and then indignantly offering, “I’m in nobody’s pocket.”

But Campos maintained both his narrative and his composure, calling Chiu out for crafting a watered-down alternative to Campos’ legislation requiring restaurants to comply with the Health Care Security Ordinance in paying for their employees’ health coverage and ensuring all surcharges tacked onto customers’ bill go to employees.

“You co-sponsored [the Campos legislation] then changed your mind when the Chamber told you,” Campos said.

When moderator Marisa Lagos from the Chronicle asked the two candidates whether they supported the deal that Mayor Lee cut with tech companies to charge $1 per bus stop for the “Google buses,” which the SFMTA board rubber-stamped this week, Chiu said, “I don’t think $1 per stop is enough.”

Campos pounced, citing Chiu’s support for the deal and quotes in a press release that the Mayor’s Office put out and his absence from the SFMTA meeting where Campos publicly called for a better deal for the city. “It’s one thing to say it here and it’s another thing to say it at City Hall,” Campos said, continuing the offensive by returning to Chiu’s sponsorship of the Twitter tax break, which disappeared from Chiu’s campaign page as the issue has turned toxic recently. “I think you know that was a mistake,” Campos said.

Chiu didn’t respond, choosing instead to actually emphasize the contrast between his insider role at City Hall and Campos’ identification with the activists. “I’m trying to work behind the scenes and get things done, he’s grandstanding before the cameras,” Chiu said.

Campos extended his “tale of two Davids” narrative, charging that there are two David Chius: the candidate first elected with progressive support in 2008, and the calculating politician who works with the moderates and the business community to advance his interests.

“Which David Chiu is going to go to Sacramento?” Campos asked.

Chiu tried to bridge the gulf between his progressive and pragmatic selves: “In 2008 I said I believed it’s progressive for us to be creating jobs and building housing.” In his closing, Chiu reminded the capacity crowd that there was a recession when he and Campos were elected the Board of Supervisors in 2008. “What we didn’t need at that time is discussion about ideology,” Chiu said.

Campos used his closing to return to the personal story he told in his introduction about immigrating from Guatemala with his family when he was 14, and seeing such hope and opportunity in the United States. “There is something happening to our city and country that we are losing what made us great,” Campos said. “This campaign is about taking our city back, it’s about protecting the heart of San Francisco.”

The SFMTA could legally charge commuter shuttles a higher fee

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

-

January 22, 2014

23

The SFMTA could legally charge commuter shuttles a higher fee

Under a newly approved pilot program that sanctions private commuter shuttles’ use of San Francisco public bus stops, shuttle operators will be made to pay a fee of $1 per stop, per day.

Many community members have criticized this fee as being too low. In response, city officials have indicated that their hands are tied due to a state law prohibiting them from charging any more than that.

But we’ve just learned that under Proposition 218 – the state law that limits local governments’ ability to impose new fees – the city has more discretion about how to calculate “cost recovery” than officials have let on.

“Prop. 218 is part of a legal scheme that doesn’t so much limit how we calculate cost recovery,” said spokesperson Gabriel Zitrin, of the San Francisco City Attorney’s office, “but limits the city to cost recovery.”

At the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board meeting yesterday afternoon (Tue/21), Project Manager Carli Paine explained very clearly how her team had arrived at the $1 per stop, per day fee amount.

“We identified everything it would take to implement this program,” Paine said. After identifying all the program components, the agency “took the number of stop events and came up with a ‘per stop event’ cost.” Further clarifying, Paine said, “The kinds of costs we included are upfront costs, ongoing program costs.”

Even while remaining within the limitations of Prop. 218, however, the SFMTA could determine whether there are other costs associated with allowing private commuter shuttles to use public transportation infrastructure, beyond just the cost of issuing permits and placards.

It would be well within the legal rights of the city to recover identified costs, as long as they were not already being recovered elsewhere, according to Zitrin’s explanation.

If shuttles’ use of public bus stops cause transit delays, for instance, what are the costs associated with those delays? More overtime pay for bus drivers?

Low-income kids getting to school late and missing breakfast? What’s the cost of that?

If rents rise in neighborhoods located along the shuttle routes (studies show they do), what are the associated costs of that phenomenon? What’s the cost of displacement resulting from those higher rents, which can create a new class of commuters originating from the East Bay?

There are no simple answers, of course. But thanks to data and technology (two things Google seems to know an awful lot about) many costs associated with the private use of public infrastructure can likely be identified.

Zitrin said it was tough to say more without having the details.

“As far as our office is concerned,” he said, “we would need full detail on what costs are being recovered.”

SFMTA Board approves tech shuttle plan

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

-

January 21, 2014

132

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of directors approved a pilot program today that allows operators of private commuter shuttles to use public bus stops, something they’ve been doing illegally for years on a very predictable basis.

The program will establish an “approved network” of 200 designated San Francisco stops where private shuttles may pick up and drop off passengers. It will issue permits and identifying placards to the private buses and require them to adhere to certain set of rules, like yielding to Muni buses if they approach the stop at the same time. (There’s already a Curb Priority Law stating that any vehicles not operated by Muni will be fined $271 for blocking a bus zone. But the city has chosen to ignore that law when it comes to private commuter shuttles.)

Finally, the program will charge shuttle operators $1 per stop per day, which covers the costs of the program implementation and no more.

The meeting drew a very high turnout that included the protesters who have been blockading the buses, Google employees, private commuter shuttle drivers, and residents of various San Francisco neighborhoods.

Sup. Scott Wiener spoke at the beginning of the meeting, saying he was fully supportive of the pilot program, which was developed over the course of many months in collaboration with tech companies who operate the shuttles.

“These shuttles are providing a valuable service,” Wiener said. He said he was sensitive to widespread “frustration and anxiety” around the high cost of housing and rising evictions, but thought it was unfair to blame tech workers. “We need to stop demonizing these shuttles and these tech workers,” Wiener said.

Then Sup. David Campos addressed the board. “I think it’s really important for us to have a dialogue to find common ground,” Campos said, adding that pushing shuttle riders into private automobiles was not a good outcome. But he also urged the SFMTA board to send the proposal back to the drawing board. “It’s a proposal that simply does not go far enough,” he said.

Campos was also critical of the SFMTA’s process of studying the growing private shuttle problem for years, drafting a proposal in collaboration with members of the tech community, and waiting until the eleventh hour once the plan had already been formulated to seek comment from community members who are impacted.

“Public input is being sought after the fact,” he said.

That feeling of being frozen out of the process was echoed in comments voiced throughout the public comment session, which went on for hours.

“I’m opposed to the $1 charge,” one woman said. “I believe it’s way, way, way too low.” She told a story of receiving a ticket for being parked in a bus zone very briefly. “It wasn’t a $1 ticket,” she said.

Another woman, who said she was born and raised in SF, said she’d been riding Muni since she was in diapers. “It makes me really sad that we have regional shuttles and corporations that are saying, you can’t just fix that system, we’re going to go around it,” she said. She urged members of the transit agency board to find a better system that would work for everyone, “because you are in charge.”

A Google employee told board directors that she is very pleased that the shuttles have made it possible for her to live in San Francisco. “Not everyone at Google is a billionaire,” she said. “Ten years after the fact I am still paying my student loans. This is a choice, I know, to live in San Francisco and commute to Mountainview. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Her perspective, however, came in sharp contrast to that of Roberto Hernandez, who spoke on behalf of Our Mission No Eviction and said he was worried that displacement caused by rising rents have forced many members of his community to move to the East Bay.

Hernandez also brought up a little-known consequence of transit delays caused by private shuttle buses.

In the elementary schools near 24th Street in the Mission, he said, “They have the breakfast program for people who are low-income. So if you show up late, you don’t get breakfast.”

Here’s Hernandez addressing the SFMTA board members.

In the end, the transit directors approved the pilot with very little discussion. “At the end of the day, this is before us as a transit issue,” said board member Malcolm Heinicke. “And we’re better with something than nothing.”

Nickels and dimes… or transit for our times?

Michael Redmond

-

January 21, 2014

14

STREET FIGHT Much has been written about the so-called “Google buses” and San Francisco’s latest round of gentrification. It’s a horrible mess and the city’s trifling $1 charge per bus stop will do little to address the broader structural problem that these buses lay bare.

Ordinary people cannot ride them, nor do the people who clean and cook for the tech world. Like tour buses, they are clunky and inappropriate for many neighborhood streets. While they do substitute for some car trips, an ad hoc private transit system does not reflect the kind of thoughtful regional planning needed to truly reduce car use in the Bay Area.

But the controversy over the private commuter buses does show that there is great potential for a public regional express bus system. Consider that in 1980, 9 percent of commuters in San Francisco left the city every day to go to work. In 2010, outbound commuters approached 25 percent. Owing to regional political fragmentation, Muni cannot provide intercounty service and thus is not the travel mode of choice for many of these commuters. And although Caltrain and BART offer some regional service, the sprawling locations of suburban firms often make regional rail impractical or at the very least time-consuming owing to unavoidable multiple transfers to local buses.

So in noteworthy ways, the rise of private transit is an immediate reaction to poor regional transit connections. Yet rather than sidestepping failed regional planning by encouraging an inequitable, two-tiered, private system, we need to expand and regionalize the existing public bus systems. San Francisco’s mayor and Board of Supervisors have seats at the table of regional planning and ought to use the controversy over private buses as an opportunity to kickstart the implementation of a regional public bus system accessible to all.

For example, something like AC Transit’s Transbay routes should be extended through San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, perhaps operated by BART or Caltrain as part of the next iteration of Plan Bay Area. This network would use reallocated express lanes on 101 and I-280 and use transit priority lanes on arterials like 19th Avenue in San Francisco and El Camino Real in San Mateo. Regional property assessments on the corporations and developers, in part already possible within the existing BART district (one should be created for Caltrain), could be used to fund such a system. Congestion charging on 101 and I-280 should also be deployed and those funds used for electrifying Caltrain and developing the parallel and complementary regional bus system.

Of course there will be opposition to a regional public bus system as there already is to progressive regional planning. Transit-connected, walkable communities in the South Bay, for example, have been made all but illegal by decades of conservative middle and upper class, anti-density, anti-tax homeowners in suburban localities. As recently as last year, this Tea Party-style conservative politics dampened Plan Bay Area, resulting in a weak regional housing plan with an underfunded and lackluster transit vision. This conservative approach stifles our collective sense of what is possible and the fear-mongering has rendered regional planners virtually impotent. Yet it can and must be overcome.

Some progressives may find it convenient (and in some cases justifiable) to target tech workers right now, but they could also direct energy into shaping the next round of Plan Bay Area. Remember that Plan Bay Area is a living document, a work in progress. The current version of the plan, weak on transit funding, has been subdued by a loud, irrational mob of Tea Party cranks bent on sabotaging anything that hints of progressive ideas. Plan Bay Area is also stifled by a regional business class that wants to keep the status quo and that is comfortable with the neoliberal model of private transit.

So while a smattering of dedicated and hard-working progressive transit activists showed up and attempted to shape Plan Bay Area last year, in the coming years the plan needs a broader progressive movement — including transit, housing, social justice, and environmental activists — to demand a more visionary regional transportation plan that connects all of the Bay Area. I am hopeful that this would not only steer regional planning in a progressive direction, but many of the tech workers who are now on the private buses would gladly join in the cause.

THE POLITICS OF SUNDAY PARKING

Speaking of hopeful, last month the SFMTA reported that Sunday metering, implemented last January, is a resounding success. Switching-on the meters doubled parking availability on Sundays, which is invariably what small businesses, most of which are open on Sunday, want to see.

Sunday meters increased the number of cars using city-owned garages and decreased the time cars circled in search of parking from an average of four minutes to two — de-cluttering streets in commercial districts. While this might seem like a boon to drivers, it also means less pollution, safer conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, less delay for Muni, and a much needed enhancement of revenue for operating public transit.

So it is mystifying that such success would be ignored by Mayor Ed Lee, who instead has proposed to discontinue Sunday metering. This is doubly confusing because, based on existing travel behavior to many commercial districts, 25 percent of people arrived by driving, while 31 percent took transit and 25 percent walked. So what the mayor is effectively saying to the pedestrian and transit-using majority is you matter little. What does matter is the few whining motorists who called him to complain about being “nickel and dimed.”

The mayor talks a good game when saying he is truly concerned about pedestrian and cyclist safety, and insisting that he wants to fix Muni. But gutting a reliable source of operating funds and pandering to car drivers who will dangerously circle for parking is inconsistent.

Lee says money isn’t an issue because his proposed General Obligation bond (which must be approved by voters) will patch the lost revenue from Sunday metering. But the GO bond will incur further debt and only fund existing capital needs, while parking meters provide a debt-free steady revenue stream for Muni. It’s also slightly misleading because the bond would not cover Muni operations, while revenue from Sunday metering does pay for operations.

The mayor’s pandering also put the SFMTA Board of Directors, which has been working out parking management and Muni finance, on the spot. Ultimately, it has to vote to preserve or scrap Sunday metering in the coming months. Now the directors have to decide if they support transit-first or the mayor’s pandering.

Unfortunately, when it comes to parking policy, the way that the Board of Supervisors has behaved lately suggests it will either jump on the mayor’s bandwagon and pander to motorists or cower in silence as good public policy is trashed. Not a good situation at City Hall, where transit riders seem to be routinely thrown under the bus by the political establishment.

Street Fight is a monthly column by Jason Henderson, an urban geography professor at San Francisco State University.

State of the City: spin over substance

Michael Redmond

-

January 21, 2014

5

It was maddening to watch Mayor Ed Lee deliver his annual State of the City address on Jan. 17. This was pure politics, from the staged backdrop of housing construction at Hunters Point Shipyard to the use of “regular people” props to the slate of vague and contradictory promises he made.

“This place, the shipyard, links our proud past to an even more promising future,” was how Lee began his hour-plus, invite-only address.

Later, he touted the housing construction being done there by Lennar Urban as emblematic of both his promise to bring 30,000 new housing units online by 2020 — the cornerstone to what he called his “affordability agenda” — and the opposition to unfettered development that he is pledging to overcome.

“A great example is the place we’re standing right now. This took us too long,” Lee said after decrying the “easy slogans and scapegoating” by progressive activists who place demands on developers.

But that implication was bullshit. As we’ve reported, progressive and community activists have long encouraged Lennar Urban (which has a close relationship to Lee) to speed up development on this public land that it was given almost a decade ago, particularly the long-promised affordable housing, rather than waiting for the real estate market to heat up.

That was just one of many examples of misleading and unsupported claims in a speech that might have sounded good to the uninformed listener, but which greatly misrepresented the current realities and challenges in San Francisco.

For example, Lee called for greater investments in the public transit system while acknowledging that his proposal to ask voters this November to increase the vehicle license fee isn’t polling well. And yet even before that vote takes place, Lee wants to extend free Muni for youth and repeal the policy of charging for parking meters on Sundays without explaining how he’ll pay for that $10 million per year proposal.

Lee also glossed over the fact that he hasn’t provided funding for the SFMTA’s severely underfunded bicycle or pedestrian safety programs, yet he still said, “I support the goals of Vision Zero to eliminate traffic deaths in our city.”

Again, nice sentiment, but one disconnected from how he’s choosing to spend taxpayer money and use city resources. And if Lee can somehow achieve his huge new housing development push, Muni and other critical infrastructure will only be pushed to the breaking point faster.

Even with his call to increase the city’s minimum wage — something that “will lift thousands of people out of poverty” — he shied away from his previous suggestion that $15 per hour would be appropriate and said that he needed to consult with the business community first: “We’ll seek consensus around a significant minimum wage increase.”

But Mayor Lee wants you to focus on his words more than his actions, including his identification with renters who “worry that speculators looking to make a buck in a hot market will force them out.”

Yet there’s little in his agenda to protect those vulnerable renters, except for his vague promise to try to do so, and to go lobby in Sacramento for reforms to the Ellis Act.

Lee also noted the “bone dry winter” we’re having and how, “It reminds us that the threat of climate change is real.” Yet none of the programs he mentions for addressing that challenge would be as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions as the CleanPowerSF program that Lee and his appointees are blocking, while offering no other plan for building renewable energy capacity.

Far from trying to beef up local public sector resources that vulnerable populations increasingly need, Lee said, “Affordability is also about having a city government taxpayers can afford.”

VIDEO: Tech buses blocked hours before vote on bus stop fees

Erica Hanna

-

January 21, 2014

81

VIDEO: Tech buses blocked hours before vote on bus stop fees

Two tech buses were surrounded and blockaded by over 100 protesters earlier today, just hours before the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors is set to vote on fees for private shuttle use of public bus stops.

The protest was organized by Heart of the City, an alliance of many long time housing advocacy groups. The marchers met at UN Plaza at at 8:30am, then proceeded to Market and 8th, where they stopped the two buses that many identified as Facebook and Google buses, based on their destination signs.

“The corporation that is employing this bus is responsible for the displacement of San Francisco tenants,” said Erin McElroy, the head of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, to the crowd. “And we’re not going to stand for that for that one more minute.”

In case you’re living under a rock… BREAKING protesters stop 2 tech buses just before SFMTA vote on bus fees pic.twitter.com/cHFeTI6ljP

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) January 21, 2014

Techies on their buses worked on their laptops as the protesters swarmed around them. One tech worker even took a quick break to taunt activist and protester Tony Robles (as Robles waves a sign) from the window of his bus. It’s in the video below.

The SFMTA’s today will vote on a pilot program that would charge private shuttles $1 per stop, per day for use of public bus stops, which are used by Muni. Mayor Ed Lee, SFMTA head Ed Reiskin and others have claimed that this falls in line with Proposition 218, which limits fees and taxes that municipalities can levy without going to the voters.

But that’s is murky rationale for a number of reasons, as the SFMTA said that enforcement would be carried out by off-duty (overtime drawing) enforcement officers, and the idea of those officers overtime fees being fully paid by the $100,000 a year contributions of tech companies is questionable.

Equally questionable, the protesters said, is the idea that Google, Facebook, Genentech, Yahoo, and others would only pay about $100,000 a year for their private shuttles to use bus stops created for and maintained by a taxpayer-funded public transit system.

Though the mayor and Google have reiterated the talking point that the shuttles take cars off the road, they also delay the already slowdown-plagued Muni system and push pedestrians onto dangerous streets as Muni jockeys for space with the private shuttles.

By 9:30, the SFPD arrived on the scene of the protest and blocked off the entrance to 8th street from Market. Shortly after, the protesters dispersed and continued marching to a Realtor’s office, and finally City Hall. There were nearly 30 reporters at the bus blockade, but by the time the protesters reached City Hall, there were only a handful left.

@SFPD have now blocked 8th street entrance to Google bus protest #tech #googlebus #panorama pic.twitter.com/0N7TevcjX1

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) January 21, 2014

WHY protesting #tech Google buses works 101: nearly 30 reporters swarmed the buses, only 5 left at city hall– pic.twitter.com/HRstF2h3Sb

— Joe Fitz Rodriguez (@FitzTheReporter) January 21, 2014

Talking points for Google busers

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

-

January 20, 2014

68

TechCrunch is reporting that a Google employee leaked an internal memo the Silicon Valley tech firm circulated to its employees, urging them to provide public comment on the controversial proposal to sanction its private shuttles’ use of city bus stops.

Here are the talking points Googlers were supposedly told to highlight in comments to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency at tomorrow’s (Tue/21) meeting, when the transit board will vote on the proposal.

I am so proud to live in San Francisco and be a part of this community
I support local and small businesses in my neighborhood on a regular basis
My shuttle empowers my colleagues and I to reduce our carbon emissions by removing cars from the road
If the shuttle program didn’t exist, I would continue to live in San Francisco and drive to work on the peninsula*
I am a shuttle rider, SF resident, and I volunteer at…..
Because of the above, I urge the Board to adopt this pilot as a reasonable step in the right direction

The leaked memo, according to TechCrunch, also noted that “While you are not required to state where you work, you may confirm that Google is your employer if you are so inclined. If you do choose to speak in favor of the proposal we thought you might appreciate some guidance on what to say. Feel free to add your own style and opinion.”

According to the article, the memo was leaked to the activists who have been organizing tech bus blockades by an employee who found it “a bit high handed.” In turn, the activists sent it to TechCrunch.

*Not according to the study that was mentioned by the SFMTA at the SF Environment Commission last week.

State of the City speech filled with unsupported promises

Sasha Cuttler

-

January 17, 2014

178

State of the City speech filled with unsupported promises

It was maddening to watch Mayor Ed Lee deliver his annual State of the City address this morning. This was pure politics, from the staged backdrop of housing construction at Hunters Point Shipyard to the use of “regular people” props to the slate of vague and contradictory promises he made.

“This place, the shipyard, links our proud past to an even more promising future,” was how Lee began his hour-plus, invite-only address.

Later, he touted the housing construction being done there by Lennar Urban as emblematic of both his promise to bring 30,000 new housing units online by 2020 — the cornerstone to what he called his “affordability agenda” — and the opposition to unfettered development that he is pledging to overcome.

“A great example is the place we’re standing right now. This took us too long,” Lee said after decrying the “easy slogans and scapegoating” by progressive activists who place demands on developers.

But that implication was complete bullshit. As we and others have reported, progressive and community activists have long encouraged Lennar Urban (which has a close relationship to Lee) to speed up development on this public land that it was given almost a decade ago, particularly the long-promised affordable housing, rather than waiting for the real estate market to heat up.

That was just one of many examples of misleading and unsupported claims in a speech that might have sounded good to the uninformed listener, but which greatly misrepresented the current realities and challenges in San Francisco.

For example, Lee called for greater investments in the public transit system while acknowledging that his proposal to ask voters this November to increase the vehicle license fee isn’t polling well. And yet even before that vote takes place, Lee wants to extend free Muni for youth and repeal the policy of charging for parking meters on Sundays without explaining how he’ll pay for that $10 million per year proposal.

“Nobody likes it, not parents, not our neighborhood businesses, not me,” Lee said of Sunday meters, ignoring a study last month by the San Francisco Muncipal Transportation Agency showing the program was working well and accomplishing its goals of increasing parking turnover near businesses and bringing in needed revenue.

Lee also glossed over the fact that he hasn’t provided funding for the SFMTA’s severely underfunded bicycle or pedestrian safety programs, yet he still said, “I support the goals of Vision Zero to eliminate traffic deaths in our city.”

Again, nice sentiment, but one that is totally disconnected from how he’s choosing to spend taxpayer money and use city resources. And if Lee can somehow achieve his huge new housing development push, Muni and other critical infrastructure will only be pushed to the breaking point faster.

Lee acknowledges that many people are being left out of this city’s economic recovery and are being displaced. “Jobs and confidence are back, but our economic recovery has still left thousands behind,” he said, pledging that, “We must confront these challenges directly in the San Francisco way.”

And that “way” appears to be by making wishful statements without substantial support and then letting developers and venture capitalists — such as Ron Conway, the tech and mayoral funder seated in the second row — continue calling the shots.

Even with his call to increase the city’s minimum wage — something that “will lift thousands of people out of poverty” — he shied away from his previous suggestion that $15 per hour would be appropriate and said that he needed to consult with the business community first.

“We’ll seek consensus around a significant minimum wage increase,” he said, comparing it to the 2012 ballot measures that reformed the business tax and created an Affordable Housing Fund (the tradeoff for which was to actually reduce the on-site affordable housing requirements for developers).

But Mayor Lee wants you to focus on his words more than his actions, including his identication with renters who “worry that speculators looking to make a buck in a hot market will force them out.”

Yet there’s little in his agenda to protect those vulnerable renters, except for his vague promise to try to do so, and to go lobby in Sacramento for reforms to the Ellis Act. While in Sacramento, he says he’ll also somehow get help for City College of San Francisco, whose takeover by the state and usurpation of local control he supported.

“City College is on the mend and already on the path to full recovery,” Lee said, an astoundingly out-of-touch statement that belies the school’s plummeting enrollment and the efforts by City Attorney Dennis Herrera and others to push back on the revocation of its accreditation.

Lee also had the audacity to note the “bone dry winter” we’re having and how, “It reminds us that the threat of climate change is real.” Yet none of the programs he mentions for addressing that challenge — green building standards, more electric vehicle infrastructure, the GoSolar program — would be as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emmisions as the CleanPowerSF program that Lee and his appointees are blocking, while offering no other plan for building renewable energy capacity.

Far from trying to beef up local public sector resources that vulnerable city residents increasingly need, or with doing environmental protection, Lee instead seemed to pledge more of the tax cutting that he’s used to subsidize the overheating local economy.

“Affordability is also about having a city government taxpayers can afford,” Lee said. “We must be sure we’re only investing in staffing and services we can afford over the long term.”

How that squares with his pledges to put more resources into public transit, affordable housing development, addressing climate change, and other urgent needs that Lee gives lip service to addressing is anybody’s guess.

Study: 30 percent of tech shuttle riders would move from SF if there were no tech shuttles

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

-

January 15, 2014

91

Study: 30 percent of tech shuttle riders would move from SF if there were no tech shuttles

We weren’t able to attend the San Francisco Commission on the Environment’s policy committee meeting on Mon/13, but there were clues (okay, a live Twitter feed) that the debate around the city’s tech shuttle policy was heating up.

The SF Environment commissioners were considering the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s newly introduced private shuttle pilot program, a system that will require tech shuttles to pay for their routine use of Muni bus stops.

You guys are missing some crazy ass shit. Now they are wordsmithing the ordinance.

— Pissed Off Voters SF (@TheLeagueSF) January 14, 2014

(San Francisco does have its share of endearing local-government nerds.)

There were a few interesting tidbits from the exchange between Carli Paine, the SFMTA project manager who is overseeing the tech shuttle policy, and the San Francisco Environment commissioners.

For one thing, Paine said the SFMTA’s game plan for enforcing the new shuttle program “is to have parking control officers that are dedicated to the program, that are working overtime hours. So they won’t be drawn from other duties.”

Apparently the $1 per stop, per day fee – which will only allow the agency to break even – will be enough to support an enforcement strategy that envisions paying enforcement officers with 100 percent overtime pay.

Then there was another interesting exchange, in which Paine indicated that a lot of people had been wanting to know whether tech shuttle riders were relocating to San Francisco specifically because the private transportation system made it easier for them to commute to Silicon Valley tech campuses.

When commissioner Ruth Gravanis queried Paine on that point, the SFMTA project manager referenced a University of California at Berkeley study finding that around 30 percent of shuttle riders surveyed would relocate out of San Francisco without the transportation option.

Audio editing by Rebecca Bowe.

Apparently there was quite a public comment session too. SF Environment spokesperson Guillermo Rodriguez told us the meeting brought “a very lively debate.”

Paine says they don’t have data on displaced residents who are commuting back to the city. Unable to calculate actual environmental impact.

— Pissed Off Voters SF (@TheLeagueSF) January 14, 2014

One more public comment. He’s from the Bay Area Council. Looks like the only pro-shuttle person here. He’s quoting Scott Wiener.

— Pissed Off Voters SF (@TheLeagueSF) January 14, 2014

At the end of the meeting, the commissioners approved the resolution after making a few amendments that urge the SFMTA “to engage in a robust study of the program’s success in reducing the unintended impacts of commuter shuttles, including their impacts on all San Franciscans.”

The SFMTA board will be voting on the plan on Jan. 21 at 1pm, Room 400, San Francisco City Hall.

Lee panders to motorists and undermines SFMTA with Sunday metering repeal

Sasha Cuttler

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January 15, 2014

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Lee panders to motorists and undermines SFMTA with Sunday metering repeal

First Mayor Ed Lee ignores the rising cost of living in San Francisco (fueled partly by his own corporate welfare for the tech industry and commercial landlords), and now he’s using his sudden concern about gentrification as an excuse to make parking meters free again on Sundays, a blatant bit of political pandering that blows a $6 million annual hole in Muni’s budget.

Maybe it’s understandable that a politician worried about his reelection prospects with restive voters would take a page from the playbook of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who slashed the state’s vehicle license fee to win that office. But what makes this move stink even more is it’s being supported by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, a supposedly independent (yet mayoral appointed) body whose top officials methodically and courageously have made a strong case for Sunday metering.

“We’re just willing to partner with the mayor to address affordability,” SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told us, admitting the agency hasn’t yet identified a funding source to fill that gap if Sunday metering is repealed on July 1 as proposed. Sunday meters were budgeted for $1 million in revenue, but they actually brought in $6 million in the last year because of more tickets than expected, feeding the outrage of motorists who feel entitled to use public roads for free.

We’re waiting for calls back from SFMTA Executive Director Ed Reiskin and Chairman Tom Nolan to find out whether they no longer stand by the arguments they’ve been making for Sunday metering, claiming it helps the local economy by making parking spaces available in neighborhood commercial districts and that it’s consistent with the city’s official transit-first policy.

“What does this say about the city’s commitment to the policy of promoting transit first?” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum said, saying she was shocked by the announcement given how underfunded the SFMTA’s transit, bicycle, and pedestrian improvement programs all are. “Why in the world are we even talking about this?”

Lee claims this is about affordability, telling the Chronicle “it was just nickel-and-diming people to death,” yet his own plans call for asking voters to approve more than $6.3 billion in taxes to fund Muni’s needs over the next 15 years, including a proposal to increase the sales tax in 2016, a regressive tax that will hit those already struggling harder than Sunday metering does to the 70 percent of San Francisco households that have an automobile.

Lee has also proposed ballot measures for this November that would increase the vehicle license fee and issue a $500 million general obligation bond, paid for on the property taxes of all city households. His own polls show the measures could be difficult sells to voters, and it’s not clear why he won’t wait for those results before ending Sunday metering.

When we asked mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey about all this, she selectively answered our questions with the following response: “The mayor believes a comprehensive funding strategy to not just maintain, but improve Muni performance, pedestrian and bike safety and the condition of our roads is what will finally turn the corner on improving San Francisco’s Transportation System. That’s why he has spent the better part of a year with the Transportation 2030 Taskforce, that recommended several ways to support these goals, including a $500 million general obligation bond, which the mayor supports. Because of a strong economy, the mayor believes it’s time to eliminate parking fees for six hours on Sundays and permanently fund Free Muni for low income youth to help working families in San Francisco and ease the affordability issues he hears about from families across the City.”

But at this point, that’s just political rhetoric, and Lee’s “comprehensive funding strategy” remains a vague and distant dream — one that will soon be $6 million a year tougher to make a reality.

Why Muni won’t earn a dime off the tech buses

Erica Hanna

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January 7, 2014

174

Why Muni won’t earn a dime off the tech buses

Every day mammoth private buses squeeze into San Francisco public bus stops, and every day they contribute to the delay of countless Muni buses. Riders walk around the Google, Apple and Genentech luxury rides and into the street to board their grimy, underfunded public transit system.

Now finally, the mayor has announced the near-approaching implementation of a pilot program to permit and regulate the tech industry’s private coaches. If approved by a vote from the SFMTA Board of Directors on Jan. 21, the pilot will begin. The only catch is, though they’ll charge those companies for the cost of implementing the program, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency won’t make any money off of the tech shuttles.

The chronically underfunded Muni won’t get a lift from Google. Yesterday (Mon/6) we finally got an explanation as to why.

On the 8th floor of the SFMTA offices, the transit agency’s director Ed Reiskin told reporters that his hands were tied by California Proposition 218, which limits what new revenue municipalities can raise without voter approval.

“Only the voters of San Francisco can enact a tax that generates excess revenue,” he said.

“This isn’t new,” Reiskin said, but he’s only half right. Though Prop. 218 was passed in 1996, this is the first time anyone at the MTA has touted it as a reason not to profit off of the tech shuttles.

We even asked Mayor Ed Lee this question just a month ago, and got a two-minute response that did not once include Prop. 218

Part of this might have to do with the nebulous quality of Prop. 218. An implementation guide from the California Budget Analyst office puts it this way: “Proposition 218’s requirements span a large spectrum, including local initiatives, water standby charges, legal standards of proof, election procedures, and the calculation and use of sewer assessment revenues. Although the measure is quite detailed in many respects, some important provisions are not completely clear.”

The waters of Proposition 218 are murky: is the government charging for the use of Muni stops a fee or a tax? In that grey area lies the answer on whether the city truly can’t charge tech buses to help fix Muni, or if this is just political cover for a government who doesn’t want to piss off tech.

Tellingly, that’s pretty much what Reiskin said.

“There’s a lot of benefit these services (buses) are bringing to San Francisco,” Reiskin told us after the press conference. “We wanted to resolve the conflicts without killing the benefit.”

“I imagine if we sat down with them and said ‘we wanna start taxing you guys’ they’d say ‘screw it, we don’t want to do the shuttles.’”

The 18-month pilot will recoup an estimated $1.5 million, the estimated cost of the project, according to the SFMTA. The project would give approval for use of 200 Muni stops by private shutle providers, out of 2,500 Muni stops in the system. We’ve reached out to California’s budget analyst office to dig into Proposition 218.

Mayor Lee addresses Google bus controversy

Erica Hanna

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December 18, 2013

116

Mayor Lee addresses Google bus controversy

At a press conference on affordable housing today, the Guardian asked Mayor Ed Lee about San Francisco’s favorite pinata: tech buses. The monstrous private shuttles, which daily whisk tech workers away to Silicon Valley, currently use Muni bus stops without paying fines, like most private autos do.

In Guardian News Editor Rebecca Bowe’s article in the print edition of the Bay Guardian this week, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson Paul Rose tells her that although there is a proposal in the works to regulate them, the SFMTA won’t profit a single dime from the plan.

“We are developing these policies to better utilize the boarding zones for these shuttle providers,” Rose said. “What we’re trying to do is provide a more efficient transportation network.”

But everyone in San Francisco who has ever ridden Muni knows that it struggles to run on time, and chronic underfunding is a perennial Muni problem. It even hurts the city’s bottom line, depressing our economy by over $50 million a year, according a report from the city earlier this May.

The report also highlights the cost to overhaul Muni between now and the year 2020: over $167 million would be needed to overhaul the system.

So why not make a few bucks from tech companies using Muni stops, who, according to the city, cause Muni delays?

We asked Mayor Ed Lee that very question at a press conference today. You can listen to his answer in the audio embedded below, or read the transcript for yourself.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: “Housing is one aspect of this, but transportation is another. The MTA’s plan to deal with tech buses is cost neutral. Is that a missed opportunity to get additional funding for Muni?”

Mayor Ed Lee: “Not a missed opportunity. That’s the essence of that 2030 task force, transportation task force, that we put together where they send a report to me, I’m in a process of reviewing all aspects of that.

Muni officials themselves were directly involved in producing that very comprehensive review along with our Planning Department and many in fact all of the departments here had implemented them.

Transportation is not just about Muni, it’s about all the modes of how people get around the city. You can’t forget that, because that’s a really big part of the task force’s work.

How to get people walking. How to get them bicycling safer and more. How to get cars less, and the cars that do, get them through where they have to go without stalling and congesting.

How do you invest in Muni? In its assets, in its transportation, in all of its aspects. How do you work with taxis and all the other car-sharing and automobile sharing companies. It’s not just about taxis, by the way. I hear from my taxi friends as I walk around City Hall, they don’t want to be left behind so we want to bring them in to see the new exciting use of Uber carshare and Lyft… all of those modes have to be paid attention to at the highest level, including investing in the assets of Muni.

I want Muni to be the choice.”

Earlier in the press conference Lee voiced his opposition to all of the hatred pointed at tech companies.

“People, stop blaming tech, tech companies,” he said. “They want to work on a solution. I think it’s unfortunate that some voices want to pit one economic sector they view as successful against the rest of our challenge. The reality is they’re only eight percent of our economy.”

We tried to ask a follow up question, but at the end of his answer on Muni, the mayor’s spokesperson Christine Falvey told the Guardian “We’re going to go on a tour now, this is off topic.”

With more bikes on the roads, Folsom Street gets a makeover

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December 17, 2013

7

As anyone who has traveled the streets of San Francisco knows, there’s an increasing number of bicyclists out there. And the just-released biennial bike count from San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency attempts to quantify that increase: 14 percent since 2011.

The agency counted bikes at 51 key intersections around the city during the afternoon/evening commute from Sept. 10-19, counting a total of 23,225 bikes. Comparing 40 counted intersections in 2011, that’s a 14 percent increase; or a 96 percent increase since 2005 when comparing the 20 intersections measured then.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition trumpeted the report as good news, including in its press release this quote from Mayor Ed Lee: “Every year we are seeing more people riding a bicycle in San Francisco, and the latest bicycle count data proves it.” And SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum said, “It’s clear that if we build it, they will come. No other mode of transportation is growing as fast or has a higher return on investment in terms of improving our city for everyone.”

But the reality is that the city is lagging far behind its own stated goals to make cycling a safer and more attractive transportation options, largely because of a severe underinvestment in its cycling network. The report notes that the city has invested $3.3 million in its bike network since 2011, but that was mostly playing catch-up from when a court injunction stalled all bike projects in the city for four years.

The SFMTA report doesn’t calculate the critical number in terms of how we’re really doing — transportation mode share, or the percentage of overall vehicle trips taken by bike — an estimate it is now working on in a separate study at the end of January.

An American Community Survey in 2012 put SF bike mode share at less than 4 percent, which is a far cry from the 20 percent by 2020 that is the city’s official goal, one it has little chance of meeting without a serious increase in infrastructure investment and other changes. The SFMTA’s own stated goal is 8-10 percent mode share by 2018, the result of failure to make needed investments, which amounts to an admission that the city’s official goal is little more than political pandering.

“We’re still moving forward on all the goals that we set to accomplish, but we do have funding needs,” SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told us, instead emphasizing the agency’s goal of attaining a 50-50 split between private automobile use and all other modes of transportation, including Muni and cycling.

The SFBC has worked in close partnership with the city, but the continuation of Shahum’s quote in her press release also indicates that she’d like to see the city doing more to promote safe cycling: “It’s time for the City to truly invest in our bicycle network, and ensure that our City’s streets are welcoming and comfortable for the growing number of people riding.”

But the city is moving forward with some bike improvements, including a makeover of Folsom Street now underway.

In the wake of some high-profile cases of motorists running over cyclists in San Francisco this year, including the Aug. 14 death of Amelie Le Moullac at the intersection of Folsom and 6th Streets, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has taken a lane from drivers to create safer cycling along seven key blocks of fast-moving Folsom Street.

The project on one-way Folsom Street between 11th and 4th streets creates an extra wide bike lane with bright green cycling signage on the roadway, with that green lane narrowing and breaking up as it approaches the right turns on 10th, 8th, and 6th streets. The idea is communicate with both motorists and cyclists about how to safely merge and avoid having cars make the unsafe “right hook” turns that are dangerous to cyclists.

“Right now, the project is almost complete and it should be complete by the end of the month,” Rose told the Guardian.

He said the design was discussed and subjected to community outreach efforts during community plan meetings in recent years, but that it was recently accelerated as a $250,000 pilot project with help from Sup. Jane Kim’s office following public concerns about how dangerous that fast-moving strip is to cyclists.

Rose said the traffic flows in the project area will be carefully monitored to see how it’s working, and the agency hopes to learn from that data “so it will inform future projects.”