Bogus city traffic emergency continues

FROM:

Mary Miles (SB #230395)
Attorney at Law for
Coalition for Adequate Review
San Francisco, CA 94102

TO:

SFMTA Board of Directors

One S. Van Ness Avenue, 7th Floor

San Francisco, CA 94103

MTABoard@sfmta.com

DATE: June 15, 2021

PUBLIC COMMENT MTA BOARD AGENDA JUNE 15, 2021, ITEM 12 (Making the "TETL" Project Permanent and Amending the Transportation Code)

This is Public Comment opposing approval of Agenda Item 12 before the SFMTA Board of Directors on June 15, 2021, which proposes amending the Transportation Code and making all "TETL" ("Temporary Emergency Transit Lanes") Projects permanent and makes additional changes on the TETL Project on Mission Street from 11th Street to 1st Street. Please distribute this to all members of the MTA Board and place a copy in applicable files on the Project.

MTA reneges on its promise that allegedly "temporary" "TETL" emergency measures would NOT be permanent. That betrayal now proposes permanent removal of nearly all parking on Mission Street, more than 168 public parking spaces to make a super-wide exclusive bus lane for buses that remain at less than 30 percent of pre-Covid ridership. The Mission parking removal will cost more than $20 million, mainly to paint the bus lanes with toxic, garish red paint.

Contrary to MTA's claim ("Staff Report") neither the "emergency" "TETL" nor the current Project were covered by MTA's "TEP" EIR. As to the 2020 "TETL" Project, MTA falsely claimed the TETL Project was exempt from environmental review as an "emergency" and/or claimed it was exempt under a class 1 CEQA exemption, again false. If the Project was subject to an EIR as now claimed, it could not have been exempt. In any event, MTA's bad faith trickery does not establish that this Project has received lawful environmental review under CEQA.

Hundreds of pages of material were not produced until June 14, 2021, making meaningful public comment impossible. Nevertheless, it is clear from even cursory view that the "TEP" EIR does not cover this Project, and the lack of a coherent Project description violates CEQA, along with the failure to accurately analyze and mitigate the Project's impacts. For example, no environmental review covers the removal of 175 "general parking spaces," 11 commercial loading spaces, and 11 passenger loading spaces on Mission Street. (Memorandum from Steve Boland MTA, to Jennifer McKellar, Planning Department, May 28, 2021 ["5/28/21 Memo"], p. 3, produced June 14, 2021.)

The claim that the Project somehow falls within "the range of project alternatives" analyzed in the TEP EIR for all environmental topics is false and does not satisfy CEQA, because merging alternatives for a different 2013 project does not provide a stable, accurate and finite Project description for the Project before this Board. Alternatives are not the Project Description required by CEQA and cannot be substituted for it.

Among other CEQA violations, there is no cumulative impacts analysis nor mitigation, even though MTA's "Better Market Street" EIR claimed that Mission Street would provide mitigation for the impacts of its ban on vehicles, including impacts on travel lanes, loading and parking. Instead, the Project will worsen traffic conditions, almost completely eliminate parking, and expand distances to catch a bus on Mission Street, adversely affecting every transit user on Mission Street, especially those who are seniors or disabled.

The Project requires an EIR and mitigation, since it is without an accurate project description, has been changed since the alleged "emergency" exemption, and it will clearly have significant impacts that have not been analyzed or mitigated. Since it violates CEQA, it cannot be lawfully approved.

In addition to violating CEQA, MTA has also violated the Brown Act and the Sunshine Ordinance without an accurate Project description and adequate notice of the Project being heard, which has precluded meaningful comment.

Rob's comment:

The false assumption---it's fair to call it a lie---justifying TETL and Slow Streets: the pandemic and recession is somehow mitigated by making it harder to drive and park in San Francisco.

See also San Francisco's "slow streets" and bus lane lie and The Slow Streets lie.