Summary of the workshop
Urban Ecology hosted the ENTRIPS Task Force meeting last Thursday evening. This meeting had several different purposes.
- Inform the community about SF MTA’s ENTRIPS process.
- Organize an ENTRIPS Task Force.
- Define Urban Ecology’s role as the outreach coordinator.
ENTRIPS is the Eastern Neighborhoods Transportation Implementation Planning Study, the transportation component of the already adopted Eastern Neighborhoods plan. SFMTA and City Planning have secured money for this study with a grant from the San Francisco Foundation.
The Eastern Neighborhoods plan took ten years to complete. Many say that it would have taken even longer if they hadn’t removed the transportation component of the plan. Now that it is finished and passed the Board of Supervisors, MTA and Planning are able to focus solely on transportation planning.
ENTRIPS will tie together several separate past transportation planning efforts, such as the Transportation Effectiveness Project, and other area specific plans. All of this data is important, yet an integral part of correctly matching the needs of the community with the transportation services that will serve those needs, is a comprehensive outreach process. This is why Urban Ecology was hired, because outreach is our specialty.
ENTRIPS Task Force
Because ENTRIPS is an official Government planning process, the only citizen group that they can allow oversight on the plan is an appointed Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC). The procedures for setting up a CAC are very specific. Getting a CAC appointed for the larger Eastern Neighborhoods plan has begun, but we believe it will take several months. Because of this delay, and the need to begin transportation planning right now, Urban Ecology is forming a Task Force. The CAC will provide the long-term opportunity for citizen involvement, and may include some people who become involved with Urban Ecology’s project. If you would like to join this task force, please email Peter Cohen, pcohensf@gmail.com to let us know.
Urban Ecology’s Role
Urban Ecology’s role during the ENTRIPS process is to be a conduit between the agencies and the community. No one knows the transportation needs of their neighborhoods better than the people that live there. We believe it is important that we have the community as a client and not the city, so as to provide some independence and some real accountability.
Next Steps
We collected a list of those interested in joining the Task Force, and will be reaching further out to make sure the Task Force is reflective of the entire study area and the people that live there. If you signed up to join, we will be contacting you shortly. We hope that this Task Force will quickly begin setting priorities for the projects in the Eastern Neighborhoods.
After explaining these three items the floor was opened for discussion. Below is a summary of the questions and comments we heard.
Questions
- Is the Public Health Agency going to be involved?
- What are the duties of the Task Force?
- When will the Task Force be created?
- How are the plans for the EN Trips going to effect other transit plan in the study area?
- Would the Task Force fold into the CAC?
- Are Mission Bay / West Soma included in ENTRIPS?
- Are CalTrans plans being included?
- What other transit plans are in play for the Eastern Neighborhood and what are their time lines?
- MTA is conducting its own outreach for ENTRIPS, how is the Task Force different?
Concerns
- There needs to be more outreach with other neighborhood organizations to get them to join the Task Force.
- ENTRIPS is coming too late, that it will miss the stimulus package money by not having any projects ’shovel ready’ when the money comes in.
- There is a lack of coordination of shuttle services in and around the project area.
- There is concern that this Task Force is not going to be able to accomplish anything.
- We need to concentrate on projects, not policies.