SFMTA

FROM:

Mary Miles (SB #230395)

Attorney at Law

San Francisco, CA 94102

TO:

Edward Reiskin, Director

Roberta Boomer, Secretary, and

Members of the Board

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency ("MTA")

1 S. Van Ness Ave., 7th Floor

San Francisco, CA 94103

DATE: September 5, 2017

PUBLIC COMMENT, AGENDA ITEM 10.1(S) SEPTEMBER 5, 2017 MTA BOARD MEETING [“ESTABLISH—TWO LEFT LANES MUST TURN LEFT – 13th St. eastbound at Bryant St.”]

This is public comment on Agenda Item 10.1(S) of the September 5, 2017 MTA Board Meeting “adopting environmental findings and approving the following parking and traffic modifications…(S) ESTABLISH---TWO LEFT LANES MUST TURN LEFT---13th St. eastbound at Bryant St.” (Referred to in this Comment as the “Project”) Please provide a copy of this Comment to all MTA Board Members and place a copy in all applicable MTA files. As noted on the MTA Board Agenda, a determination under the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) is subject to appeal to the Board of Supervisors within 30 days. 

As already explained in previous comment incorporated by reference here, The Project will clearly have significant impacts under CEQA, including transportation, air quality, safety, and parking impacts. The claimed "categorical exemption" does not apply for the reasons already stated. 

In addition, the approval action before you must be denied, because MTA staff Jennifer Wong repeatedly, emphatically and without qualification stated in testimony both before this Board on April 18, 2017, and before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on June 27, 2017, the falsehood that the 13th Street Project would not remove two traffic lanes on 13th Street eastbound at Bryant Street. 

Those and other material falsehoods by Ms. Wong and other MTA staff substantively and materially misled the public and the Board of Supervisors as to the Project’s impacts on traffic, parking, air quality, GHG, and emergency vehicle access.

The failure to accurately describe the Project violates CEQA’s fundamental purpose to inform the public and decisionmakers and distorts and invalidates the environmental analysis. Here Ms. Wong and other staff repeatedly insisted (over public evidence to the contrary) that the Project would NOT remove two traffic lanes on eastbound 13th Street. 

Further, CEQA prohibits piecemealed and segmented environmental “review” such as MTA’s attempted deception here. 

For all the reasons previously stated and stated here, the Board must therefore reject this proposed Project because it violates CEQA. Further, as an ethical matter for misleading the public, the MTA should immediately take action against its employees who, as here, lie to the public and the decisionmakers.