 Hello, everybody. Welcome. Welcome to the open streets session here. Hello, everybody. We're going to get started here in just a few minutes. We're getting our slides put on here so you can follow along with us what we're talking about. But we're going to get started on that formal presentation in just a few minutes, but we're going to go ahead and say hello to you all and get started while we're waiting. So we're going to just start with the round of introduction so you know who's going to be presenting. And then for the format what we're going to be doing is each of us is going to have about a five minute presentation kind of going over what our programs or relationship to open streets are. And then we're going to go ahead into a Q&A and really just to open it up to all of you to talk about what you want to talk about with open streets. So I'm going to start. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming. My name is David. I'm with California and really excited to be with you all today. I'm an associate director of advocacy and community engagement. We work on the funding and the advocacy side of open streets. So excited to talk to you about that. Hi, I'm Alex Merlino. I'm the CFO of Sicily via where Los Angeles based open streets organization and excited to be here today. And hello. This one's louder. Is that is. All right. So, hello, my name is Katie Bernbaum. I'm the associate director for livable city or the nonprofit that runs the Sunday streets SF program in San Francisco. Let's see here how we do we've got, we've got signs coming or we got our presentations coming up. I'm going to start us off here so. And it is the first one right there. Wonderful. Alright, so Sunday streets. So I'm going to just go ahead and give you kind of an overview of Sunday Street San Francisco. Basically, what the program is or was and how we were founded. And then we're going to talk about what the 2022 season looks like because we're coming out of a pandemic. It's our first time coming out. Since 2020. And then we're, I'm just going to end with sort of kind of what we see livable city is kind of where we're focusing on as the future of open streets and where we're trying to grow as an organization to really support the work of open streets in San Francisco. So with that. So, yeah, so Sunday streets San Francisco we're coming out from our pan from the pandemic. We've been on a two year hiatus. Go ahead and switch the slide here. So Sunday streets was inspired by the sick leave is in Bogota Columbia. We are actually, and we lost that. Alright, so it started in 2008 as a mayoral initiative with then Mayor Gavin Newsom now our governor. And he worked with the shape of coalition in San Francisco along and we were part of that the nonprofit livable city to bring the open streets programs or open streets sick leave is to San Francisco. We started in 2008 with just one long route along the waterfront. And it was a huge success. And since then we've been working very closely with the city and county of San Francisco to grow the program into an annual event calendar that serves over 100,000 San Franciscans with free recreation every year. It's been a pretty amazing, you know, kind of a said, it was a pilot program, but it did really inspire an entire city. And it has stuck and we're growing every year. So we move on to the next one. With that, though, in 2020, we were grounded the eve of our first event. So the Friday before our first event of the year. We were all from the Department of Public Health that we were going to have to shut down. It came, you know, apparent pretty quickly that we were not going to be able to have any events that year. We pivoted all of our, our skillsets and resources into supporting other types of kind of open streets and open space outdoor efforts across the city so a lot of things like you're seeing outside out there the you know shared spaces and outdoor dining. We also supported small businesses making parklets around in different neighborhoods so they can bring out their businesses outside. And we also leaned into play streets programs, especially in neighborhoods that were really impacted by open space or lack of open space. So that's what we were doing during the two years of the pandemic, but now we're able to roll back out with six historic Sunday streets routes so these are our big mile plus long Sunday streets routes across San Francisco. And we're also going to be able to offer our second annual Phoenix Day, which was what our program really pivoted towards for the pandemic and presented in 2021 is the culmination of all of our center smaller format events that we did across the city. Go ahead and move to the next slide. So what we're going to be focusing on for the Sunday streets for the 2022 season is neighborhoods that lack recreational and open space. That is the core to our mission and we are very very mission driven open streets program. So we're focusing on the neighborhoods in San Francisco that have experienced the most trauma because of the pandemic because of you know kind of socio economic factors as well as already pre existing kind of disparities in the public public realm. So tenderloin is a really central place that we're going to be focusing on and we're kicking off this Sunday. In the tenderloin April 10th if you want to come out and see the magic you can head on over to the heart of San Francisco and see a mile of streets transformed in a car free community space in the heart of the tenderloin. And then we can go on to the next slide. We're also going to be going to Bayview which is in the southeast side of San Francisco, really important neighborhood for the African American community in San Francisco, and also a very I would say kind of car dependent neighborhood still because the transit is not really where it needs to be. So it's a really important place for us to be really investing our development time and resources to bringing that community into the fold of what Sunday streets can be. And then we can move on to the next one we're going to be in the Excelsior also in the south southern part of the city. Another neighborhood that is pretty car dependent because of various factors with transit and multi family homes, but also a really incredible neighborhood for engaging as an intergenerational families in the open streets magic. So, and then we can move on to the next one. We're also going to be revisiting one of our most popular routes which is Mission Valencia it is our most popular route. This is as many folks talk about it it is not so much open it is actually a crash of humanity out there on all of Valencia and it is it's beautiful and we're excited to roll back out. One of the really exciting things that came out of the pandemic and sort of having to go into all different sorts of shapes is we partnered with Carnival San Francisco to actually help present the Valencia street programming that we had in 2021. And they're going to be partnering with us again to also be able to bring the magic of Carnival and cultural programming out to open streets on Valencia. We are also going to be presenting the third time ever we're going to be presenting a Sunday street soma so this is in south of market and really runs pretty much from the central or sorry, soma west all the way to the waterfront. And it's been a pretty amazing opportunity for us to develop a new route with a new community. We did two of them before the pandemic it's been two years and now everybody is can't wait to have an open streets back in soma. And then we're going to be ending our big beautiful mile plus long routes in western edition and that's going to be the end of our said kind of large format open streets events of the year. But we are not going to finish the season there we're going to finish the season on October 16 and we can go to the next slide there. So, in 2021 we launched a new part of Sunday streets which is called Phoenix day, and we basically blew up the open streets format and said, it doesn't need to be a connected mile plus of open streets you can have block parties you can have family fun hubs you can have bike rides on existing car free streets, all that it is about is that it's about celebrating community health and wellness and being together in our streets because they are car free for that day. So, we presented the first annual Phoenix day in 2021 on October 17, and we celebrated with 30 neighbor led block parties so that were posted all across San Francisco. We led a 20 mile community like bike ride that was led by an environmental justice group named easy still play blow, and then we also hosted five sort of smaller open streets programs all around the city on commercial corridors. So it was a huge success we it was very much a pandemic informed program, but it did an inspired a city. The city was alive again for the first time and it has been in many many years, and there's so much joy in the streets that it is stuck and we're going to be rolling out again for their second annual Phoenix day so you can go to the next slide there. And so we are going to be ending the season in 2022 at their second annual Phoenix day it's going to be taking place on October 16, and we are really trying to embed it as a San Francisco tradition that the third Sunday of every year of every October we are celebrating the work of the city to provide what it means to be in our streets together and making our communities in our city and our planet more resilient and healthy. So, oh, sorry you can skip through that that was that one is supposed to be deleted. Alright, so now we're going to talk and just going to add a little bit here with where I said we're thinking about as the future where we're trying to lean grow open streets in San Francisco. So the first thing is really we are advocating, we're pushing, we're trying to make the case and help everybody understand that open streets and Sunday streets, open streets, they need civic-level investments. So they are civic-sized programs. We are transforming neighborhoods. We are transforming miles. We need civic-level investments that meet the amount of impact that we have, but also the opportunity that is here in this moment. We just had an entire world inspired by what we can do in the streets. Let's take the opportunity to further that right now, but we need civic-level investments with that. What we're also doing is we're looking to develop workforce development in social enterprise programs so that the folks that work at Sunday streets and produce Sunday streets are able to also go on to careers in the special event industry and can grow our industry there. And then we're also really looking to push for, to support and grow inspired and empowered communities to actually realize these spaces on their own streets. So what that looks like is both working kind of hand in hand with a lot of communities to build up their interest and knowledge about what, as I said, either in open streets or a block party, any kind of car free street can do with them, but then also working with the city and various other stakeholders to make it easier to do that for them and to make it more accessible and have them be more accessible tools to actually create their transformations. So those are kind of the three areas that we're really looking into and leaning into over the next 10 years of our open streets program. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and pass it on over this way. So I have a lot of slides. Hello. I have a lot of slides. So I'll just, okay. Well, that's me. I'm the Chief Financial Officer at Cyclavia. We're based in downtown LA and we run our LA streets, LA Open Streets program. You can go on. My first Cyclavia was in 2014. It was on Wilshire Boulevard. And it was a magical day, right? The streets of LA, the cars and the traffic were gone and they were replaced by Angelinos who were smiling and laughing. And I'll never forget that day. That's my daughter, eight years old. She went from using her scoots to riding a real bike for the first time, which shows us that Cyclavia really meets people where they are and created a safe space for us to have that activity. Okay. We were also inspired by Cyclavia Bogota. There was a group of concerned citizens that wanted something new for their city, went to the mayor's office with a champion in that office. They were able to launch Cyclavia October 10, 2010. Since then, we've done 38 events, over 240 car free streets in miles. And with 1.9 million participants, we also have 155,000 fans, digital fans or digital community across all of our platforms. You can go next. So what does it take to make a Cyclavia? All of our events, we prioritize safety is number one, accessibility for all forms of transportation, people powered transportation, inclusivity. This event is for everyone and these are free to attend. Our hubs are created as a place to slow down and engage. So we have partner programming, food, seating, bathrooms, all of it info booth, first day to anything you need along the route, you need your bike fix, you get it at the hub. We also prioritize visiting route and neighborhood assets like public parks or historical landmarks. And together with our partners, our host city, our staff volunteers, we create a culture on the streets that allow children to play, multimodal transportation, people powered are together on the streets in harmony. Families get to recreate, show pride in your city culture and you make new friends and build existing relationships. Cyclavia is a great space. We're a civic platform, so you were talking about this. So here we work with the LA field to celebrate their 100 year anniversary or we'll work with partners to gather information from the community or launch a new pilot program. But what does it take? It takes a lot more than most people expect to do these events. For new routes, we have up to a year of planning for repeat routes. It takes us about six months. Our budget, 45% of our budget is covered by city contracts, which means we're raising 55% of our budget. It's over a million dollars a year. It's a lot. It's that civic and, you know, it's the thank you. And then insurance. Insurance is becoming a bigger issue every year. I don't know if you're, well, maybe we'll talk about that, but it's a serious challenge. This is the heart of L, I'm sorry, this is the celebrate LA route with LA Phil. It took us a year to plan this route. LA Phil spent a million dollars in programming. Huge success. The other thing is outreach. So we spend about 10 weeks doing outreach. We go to every resident business, city council, church, everyone at least twice. Business is a very important part of these routes promoting local businesses. We work hard to try and get businesses to activate on those days. And you can see how when they do activate, it really lends itself to the success of our events. Partners. So we spend year round we're cultivating our partners, sponsors, our city partners, foundations, council offices. Here's an activation with Metro bike share. So these are metros are funder. They are also doing great things for the community that they can uplift during our events. And then so during the pandemic, it was a really interesting shift for us. We went into the pandemic thinking, oh my God, like this could be the end. And then during the pandemic, we realized we gained following digital followers. We realized that our skill and impact went far beyond our events. And so moving forward, as we're moving toward monthly events, we are really looking to deepen our impact. And we haven't we haven't landed on the advocacy issues yet. That's where we're going and just going deeper in the communities. That's it. Thank you. So again, I'm David with AARP California. Really excited to be here today to talk about to be here today to talk about our open streets perspective, especially from an advocacy and funding angle. We just love being able to fund organizations like Cyclovia and many others. Just because of the fact that this is an intergenerational opportunity to really enjoy the street right outside your front door in a way that a lot of folks who are aging in place don't currently have access to. So for more than a decade, we've been advocating for what we're calling our livable communities priorities. And what that means is physical wellness, mental health and decreasing social isolation, equity, aging in place, financial stability, and improving air quality. And already, I think you can already tell these are all things that you can get out of an open streets event. So next slide. And you know, we're always engaging and listening with our 3.3 million members here in California. We have 38 million nationwide. And yeah, we love working and supporting working with and supporting community partners. Just given the fact that these are principles that they that they actually really show up in their in their events that they've been doing. And what I what I do in my day to day is advocate the state capital. I'm based in the Sacramento office. And what I'll talk a little bit about later is how a lot of these events are really driving policy changes, major policy changes at state agencies and in legislation. So here's the big problem statement is that you know, our 60 plus population is projected to grow at the biggest amount in decades. In 2030, there will be 10.8 million older adults in California. That's a quarter of the state's population. And so we got a plan for this right now. We really have only made our communities optimal for people who are around 30 to 40 and are able body. And for those who are aging, right, you lose a lot of independence physically, financially, and a lot of other ways. And so that's where ARP 15 years ago, right, made that shift from being the organization, everybody looked at of, Oh, you're all just doing, you know, Medicare, Social Security, and we realized, no, it's got to be broader. There's these community really opportunities to work with folks as they age in place. And so that's how we really began implementing that vision and crafting that vision. And really, it's becoming affordable and healthy aging is really becoming harder and housing and transportation are two huge factors in that driving that. California is car centric. I don't need to convince anybody in this room of that. And that car centricity increases financial costs and also really prevents older adults from living safe, active and healthy lives. I mean, the people who are turning 60 now are folks who are really interested in keeping active and healthy and doing things from biking to walking to other activities. And outside their front door, they can't because they've got a 40 mile an hour zones, you know, four lane street outside their outside their place, but people are going 60s. That's not exactly inviting for, you know, older folks who just maybe bought their first e-bikes. E-bikes are now selling cars, right? If you first got your e-bike, then you're like, where am I going to actually bike here? I don't feel safe. So just want to spend a couple, just a minute or two on something really exciting that I think really encapsulates how these open streets events have really activated parts of government. So we've been working with Governor Newsom in crafting what we're calling what he's called the master plan for aging. It's California's first whole of government blueprint for the state to be prepared for demographic changes. And so what's really exciting is that we were able to get into the master plan for aging, which is an executive order that he signed in 2019. We got the phrase transportation beyond cars in that MPA. That's never happened before, right? I don't think that we've ever seen that in state government. And this is a mandate from the governor to all of his agencies, all his secretaries. And what I wanted to kind of put in the next slide here, it might be a little difficult, so I'll just kind of just generalize here. But these are going to be part of what they're calling the MPA dashboard, which is going to be publicly accessible. And it's going to be all of these metrics that actually holds folks like agencies like CalSTA and Caltrans accountable for how they're actually implementing the goals of the MPA like transportation beyond cars. So I'll just read really quickly that first one. This is my favorite one is promote within existing resources ways to improve community walkability for older adults and people with disabilities through the California active transportation program and complete streets projects. So really big wins there. And again, the lead agency, they call this out in the MPA saying, okay, CalSTA, this is your deal, you got to do it. And so we can go to slides since I just kind of summarize that. But yeah, we're really excited. We're for the first time ever we have an accountable mandate through this dashboard and through the master plan for aging and AARP sits on several aspects of committees that that actually are going to implement all of this work. And so we're just excited because that's going to hopefully lead to safe, healthy and open streets through funding that's now dedicated and policy that's now defined. And so this is I took this from our sick LaVIA pictures. It's just, I mean, I live for 14 years in LA and sick LaVIA was just a joy every time I got to go to and really open streets with the bedrock upon which age friendly communities are built. I saw that in the many times I went there and other events 66 Golden Streets is another great one for those of you all may know. But really, it's a vision in action, a vision of an active, healthy, safe enjoyment of the streets again right outside our front doors. And so just really excited to talk to you all about all of that. I think that there's one more. So yeah, I think that when I worked day to day on bills and at the state capital and every time I get I try to plug these open streets events to elected officials and they know it by now. Everyone knows by now and elected officials have been showing up to these events and their staffs as well. So whenever we're advocating for things like AB 43, which reforms speed limits and also working with Caltrans on their walk and pedestrian bike advice advisory committee, you know, they're there now. Well, it's all baked in that these streets are something that consumers want that people of all ages want and that they don't just want once a quarter or once a month or blue moon. They want this all the time. They want this actually to show up in the redesign of their streets and their neighborhoods. So this is this is leading to victories right now. And this is probably probably the most optimistic I've been in years on all of this stuff. And so again, just kudos to the great work for open streets folks are doing in these events. And yeah, I guess I kind of talked to myself ahead of here, but yeah, AB 43, the zero fatalities task force. You know, again, the promotion of open streets during the pandemic like we saw a lot of and I'm really excited to that some of these things have become permanent that that now that people have had it for two years that, yeah, let's keep it. Let's actually have the alfresco. Let's have the the safer streets or the car free streets. We can't be like Paris though, man, Paris keeps showing us up. And yeah, we're getting increased funding. I mean, the California governor and his budget. I think it's 500 million at this point for a new active transportation funding. So and we're hoping to get more of that. That's I think Cal bike is part of the advocacy there. So again, we're just on a roll for the momentum. You can really feel it. We have a lot of work to do. But again, for me, it's just seeing the joy in people's faces as they imagine their communities. I can't tell you we have booths at syquivia that I've staffed a lot and people show up for the first time they say I haven't felt like a kid in decades in my community that I've been grown that I've grown up in. And when they're from their first ebike and they're getting that rush of air, especially one I've loved this one person was saying, yeah, it's so hot outside. Why not just use the air conditioning from biking to save on AC costs. And so just getting out there and enjoying your community. That's the goal. So really excited to keep supporting all this and excited to work with you all and talk with you about this. Thank you. Yeah, so my name is Eric Simon Sonoma County. And I am in the pro actually I have so I have a question for you two and I have a comment for you. Let me do the comment first and then I'll do the question. I am well into my 60s and run with a very fit and active crowd and I've just been in so many meetings lately when I hear people in their 30s and 40s talk about people over 60 is being I don't know decrepit or putting us in the same bucket with people who are disabled or or needing help or whatever. And it sort of like sounds like the way that we in our 60s talk about people in their 80s. Maybe I don't know, but so we've got ages and going the other way. But but that's just been very up for me lately. Anyhow, so my question for you two. So I'm working on doing an open streets event in Paloma population 55,000. I've attended Ciclavia and Sunday streets and San Jose's Viva Kaye and bike Santa Cruz's Watsonville event. There's a city much more of our size. I hope nobody is in here from like Santa Cruz. So I don't say anything that would offend you. But the the energy was not quite there partly because you weren't on a commercial street I think was part of it. But so what I'm trying to figure out is how to take, you know, obviously we're never going to have the kind of budget that you do for this big stuff. But I'm trying to create that same big energy that I felt in LA, San Francisco, San Jose, in Paloma. And so, you know, having that same kind of energy on a smaller budget in a smaller space and and any thoughts about that, you have to get community buy in and doorknock every single house business church and get those people invested in that event and out on the street that day. I think that's the easiest way to. Well, echo that. And I'm very flattered that you think we have a big budget and that we were big and shiny. It is a shoestring and duct tape. And that is what is holding the big, beautiful open streets in San Francisco open. And I don't want to speak for you. There is not very much budget in this. This is actually part of the civic level investment of that is needed. But with that, what you can do with investing in the people is what makes every open street and it fills it with the enormous big love and energy. And that is what you're feeling at all of these events that feel that you feel that energy. So yes, echo that outreach, outreach, outreach, and you don't you don't need any money. You actually just need some some like FaceTime with people and no money. Tears, if you can build up a nice core of volunteers. I'm from Oakland, so I can insult Oakland. I love my hometown. So we actually had open streets during COVID. And then we heard that the city was going to close down open streets. So of course, there were some neighborhoods that were happy. My neighborhood, there were a number of people who were unhappy. And so we tried to talk to the city. We went to city council meetings. I organized like a bunch of different neighborhoods in North Oakland. I think about five or six neighborhoods, one neighborhood actually had a petition going. And they closed it anyway. And we said we will maintain it ourselves. You know, when I was a kid growing up in Oakland, we played out in the streets, it was safe enough to do it. We do every kid on the block. And now with gentrification moving in Oakland and increased traffic, I don't even know who the neighborhood kids are, they go in their house, they go in their backyards, but open streets brought them out. And I'm like, Oh my God, you have three children? I thought you just had one. So it was really like reliving my childhood, just being able to walk down the streets. And then the other thing is, we had a smaller version of Sicily via. So I'm on the board of a neighborhood association. And we had open streets on Long San Pablo, which used to be a highway back in the days. And, you know, the businesses were engaged. People came out and had boots. I mean, it was wonderful kids were biking. You know, the street is wide. It's like maybe six. Well, maybe four. I don't know. It's very wide. Is it four? Seventy-four feet across. Can you imagine? And there's a median in the middle, right? And so we had a good time. I mean, the kids were out. We had kids activities, adults activities. And it was just absolutely wonderful, but we can't get any funding now. It was so successful. How do we get the cities to actually devote some money to this? Because it was wildly successful. Emeryville, which is next door to us, participated. The second time we went through Berkeley along San Pablo, it's about nine cities in San Pablo, but we have three of them. And it was great. How do we get our cities to pay attention to that and to actually fund them? Thank you. Yes, that is the question on everybody's mouth, right? Exactly. No, we are seeing the impact of it in exactly this last two years have showed everybody and all sorts of different diverse folks that maybe weren't part of that advocacy before are like, yes, no, this is something that we completely want. And it is really frustrating that it is not an immediate return on this investment that we're seeing right now because it was an emergency response that we created it in. And we all popped into it, right? We were neighbors. We did it. We took care of our neighbors' children. And we supported our small businesses. We did it as community members. And now our governments are not necessarily returning and rapidly reinvesting back into that. I mean, it is incredibly frustrating. I don't necessarily have the answer of how do we do this. So we really got launched because the group that founded Seglavia found a champion in the mayor's office. I think that's what you need to do, like on the city council or in the mayor's office. But you have to find that person within the system that's going to fight for you. Then you can. And even with that, we have champions in the mayor's office and it's still not flowing down. So with that, I mean, that's not easy. It's not easy, but it's a start. Yeah. And I think I will, you know, one thing I will say is that this is the battle of our lifetimes, right? It is. It's the transition of our lifetimes. So it's not going to happen immediately, but we do need you and your neighbors. Exactly what you're doing is the answer, but just for longer, for longer. And to keep it up. And I would say with David possibly from the state down. Okay, my question is for you, David. So I'm really intrigued by this master plan for aging. And I think this could be a tremendous resource for us to use on our local, if there's policy on the state level, we can use that for our local advocacy to approach our electives and say, Hey, this policy, we have to do it, right? Well, ideally, we can say that. So my question just is how do we, can I just Google MAP and get this language you're talking about transportation beyond cars and all the other things you pointed out? Is that easily accessible online now or? Yes. All right. Master plan for aging. Just Google that. I would say master plan for aging, Newsome or AARP, it'll pop up. The SEO is strong. Yeah. And it's really nice. They've got a lot of good documents in the dashboards, dashboards brand new though, and they haven't, they just started doing it. So the metrics, of course, are all at zero. But yeah, I like to follow up on what she just asked. I know that AARP has, from what I see from the outside, a tremendous constituency and a lot of money. And I congratulate you for both things. But I guess I worry about the effects of those dollars and where you're actually putting them. If it goes to state agencies or even municipalities, it goes through the civil servant kind of layer. And I'm talking about my own town of Culver City in Southern California. Most of the people that work for the city don't live in the community. And I think that the people that know from the ground up what's going on in the community are people like bicycle advocates and pedestrian advocates. And that money we never see. So I'm just wondering if there could be ways to fund more local initiatives rather than just go to cities or counties or whatever, where that money seems to disappear or get tied up in red tape that doesn't show up at the grass roots ever. So is that a possibility? Yeah, so just a quick clarification. We do not support cities or government agencies. We support Cyclavia and organizations like Cyclavia and CalBike and a lot of other community partners over the years. So we put our money there because of the community partnership and obvious impact that we get through there. As far as funding for those things, Culver City just got a couple of complete streets, renovations, right? Culver Boulevard, right? It's a quick bill. Okay, yeah, there's some good stuff going on in Culver City. I lived there for a year and I would have loved to have biked on that because I got hit on that street. So yeah, and just a quick on that, this program called, there's several programs at the state level called, like one is the Active Transportation Program. That's for all the legislative folks in the room, they know how stymied they've been. Advocates have been stymied by this program because there's just not enough money. CalTrans drives its fee, et cetera, et cetera. There's a couple other ones like shop really in the weed stuff that is just backed up for years and in some cases like a decade plus. And what we're hoping is that stuff like the MPA and changes to CalTrans policy will help move that along faster because you're right. I mean, it's from a community perspective, I think you're looking at these things saying, when is it going to be permanent? When is it going to come to our street? You're not seeing it because government likes to take its time. But hopefully with accountability, like a dashboard like this, people are going to have that fire under them to say, hey, look, you just promised this. So where's our return on investment? Great question. First, thank you for all the activities that you're doing. I'm here. I'm from Orange County. We don't have like a lot of, we don't have sicklovia and other people think that we're like all the cities in Orange County are wealthy and they don't need this type of projects, right? But I work in Santa Ana, which is why I bury this in the community. Anyway, so my question is how much or how long it takes for you to get the permits for the events that you do and also the amount of money or how much it costs that. And then I have other questions. So permits and funding? Permits. Okay, hi. Permits. I don't handle the permits, but it takes months to get the permits. You have to have your insurance in place to get the permits. So that's a whole process. Give yourself at least 90 days for that budget. It really depends. I mean, it depends on how much your city like city services is your city going to, are those going to be in kind costs? Are the police, your security, where we're the fire department, sanitation, all the city agencies are involved in your event. So are they going to eat those costs? We're blessed like LA. Yes, so we're so grateful. LA takes care of those costs. That's their in kind. You said the 40% of the funding needed for one Ciclovia comes from grants, right? It comes from our contracts with the city. So the city, depending on the length of our contract or the length of our event gives us a certain up to a certain dollar amount. And then we can we submit invoices. They're all reimbursables. So it really depends on how much mitigation is on the route, how much outreach, how many diverse communities, like how much translation you have to do. It's a lot. I'm happy to answer any questions. And if you want to reach out to me, I can work on budgets with you. Because we did one and one, well, a couple of times, almost Sundays on Main Street and Santa Ana. And just to pay for police officers to be harassing the community. We pay like $75,000 just for police officers. That's crazy. Right. So ideally they would donate, I mean, the city would pay for that cost and not charge you. And another comment that I have because I was privileged last month to be in Bogota and as part of Ciclovia. Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. I was like, oh my God. And I also have the opportunity to meet with the Instituto Distrital de Recreación y Deporte, which is the equivalent of Parks and Recs. And they're the ones that actually coordinate and they're in charge of Ciclovia every Sunday and holidays. And they mentioned that the city actually allocates funding to do it. So it's not that the community, it is like actually a city event and coordinating by them. But also it's very community oriented because you have guardianic which is, there are like students from college students that get trained to be the ones supporting and be the ones in charge of the safety of the people that are in Ciclovia. So it's something that we should think too. Like there is like a specific task, I mean tax or revenue events, right? Or activities. Hi, thanks. Any with the San Diego County Bike Coalition and shout out to LA for Ciclovia. It's an amazing event. And we started to pick up on this 10 years ago when I started. We just took trips up there to see it. And I think if you're trying to do it, you take your electeds with you, you know, and we started that way. And since then we've done about 12 now. And we're starting to branch out in other cities of the county. And I just think they're an amazing, transformative thing and super powerful. Although, you know, every time we still sort of struggle with our funding formula and how that works. Similarly, like San Francisco did the tour yesterday, the slow streets, incredible. Like and people, they were busy, like they're just busy out there yesterday. It was really people, tons of people walking and all that stuff. I guess my two questions. One is, have you streamlined the permitting process because it does happen so frequently? Because I mean, we've done it enough. And I'm just like, why are we going through this every single time? When you know, and like, there should be like, if there's cities into it, if they're funding it, could that be streamlined? And then the other question is, oh, Metro, the transit agency, right? Is that Metro? Or the yes, is Howard, why are they funding it? Why are they a part of it? What's that connection? Okay, I can answer these questions. Have you, you should speak to Rachel Burke, who's our chief program officer and really the producer of our events. She could help you with that permitting issue. They it is a bit more streamlined, right? They know it's coming. We have a calendar and it, but we have to have things in place. And Metro, it's a Metro grant. Beyond that, I don't deal with that. So I'm sorry, I can't answer the question. If anybody wants to talk to me after I can give you what our city has done to streamline permitting process, I can let you all know. So I'm going to offer this microphone to a listener, since I am a talker. Raise your hand if you're a listener. Hi, thank you. I'm just wondering, how do you bring these open street events to underserved communities? So you talked a little bit about how you decide where it takes place, but you can give more information in regarding that. And also because in underserved communities, you may not find a place where there are a lot of small businesses or a place that seems welcoming at first sight, right? But how do we get out of this cycle? Thank you. It sounds a little bit like a broken record, but outreach. Outreach. So yeah, and it does take at least about a year plus, I would say, to develop a new route. And I'm just kind of, that's the same thing to us in the list that for Sunday streets is like your new route is going to be in an impacted community and work. So it's kind of the same and same. So giving yourself a lot of time so that you can have the conversations with all of the stakeholders. So and that is like a huge thing is you cannot rush it. You need at least a year, especially if it is in an impacted community, you need potentially more than a year so that you can socialize the, you know, the idea of it, have the conversations and then get to planning. And we're currently doing that actually right now in San Francisco. And we're developing a new route in Bayview, which is a neighborhood that has a long history of lack of investment from the city, redlining, all sorts of things. So and it's exactly that there aren't there isn't really a strip of like places where there's a lot of businesses. The main kind of commercial corridor actually functionally does not even work for the street closure. We can't do it safely. So we're going to be having to do kind of a route that is on some more residential streets. And how we're doing that is, is that we've been in conversation, we've been in conversations for about a year about this. And we've been in the community for 14 years already, standing every year there in the community being there all year round to be able to receive, you know, receive questions, have the have the dialogue with folks when they are having concerns about it, and just consistently be there so that it is not just like we're here and we're pulling, you know, throwing down our barricades and we're rolling out no matter what, it really is that investment in time and conversations. So my question is around, you know, when you do a lot of these events where you close down streets, you have police involved in either, you know, helping to set that up or presence at the event, but that can be really alienating for communities of color. So have you dealt with that at all in planning these events? Have you thought about how that interaction will be or maybe, you know, how to work with the community to navigate that? Yes, it is a huge point of discussion every year and definitely since the founding of the program. So similar thing happened in Sunday streets when we started, we got a like $100,000 police bill or like we didn't even want all those police out there. Okay. So it was a long conversation. You know, so it's conversations. It's long kind of long conversations. It was absolutely an issue to have that many police officers at our first couple of events. It was definitely a funding issue for them as well. And so over the years, we've been able to work very closely with all of our police departments and they understand the level of risk or lack thereof. You know, as I said, there's not really a whole lot of risk and it's not very dangerous at Sunday streets. So they pulled their staffing back significantly at Sunday streets. So that's like a very, you know, beneficial sort of move there. And then, yeah, we do have pretty direct and you know, frank conversations with the departments, each station that we're, you know, the neighborhood that we're working in to talk to them about what their plans are, how they can, how they can best plug in kind of what amount of staffing is really needed. We do oftentimes do also have a kind of a sit down conversation explaining again, there's nobody that's doing anything illegal here, like just treat everybody sweetly and like it's an opportunity for you to be like really, you know, have everybody love you. So we have those conversations. We do have those conversations. And then we also work kind of closely with I would say sort of the like recruitment departments as well as their kind of community relations departments to come and bring like proactive programming out to be engaging in that. So there are police officers at the event. They are acting as security, but mostly they're actually handing out stickers and, you know, like, you know, doing like a relay race with kids and stuff in the street and that and they're kind of directed both by us and then their supervisors to interact in that way specifically. But it's an ongoing conversation always and forever. The question. Yeah. And just to follow up on that, is it a requirement from the city that the police be there? I guess I'm coming from Eugene where we had an open street events where the police were not involved in closing the streets at all. So it was entirely volunteer runs. Yeah, it is. It is a requirement. And it is different from city to city. So it is a requirement from San Francisco to have police just the amount of people because our events are anywhere from five to 20,000 folks and you have to have police officers staffing as a city requirement. Like whether we would say that that is required, it is a city requirement to have police officers staffing specifically. Thank you. That wasn't actually my question, but I'm just curious. Sorry. So my question is, seems like you had a lot of really great routes wondering what personal physical improvements have been made to the infrastructure after having an open street event. That is a really great question. We, you know, I think that is kind of the forefront of what we want to see. A lot of the routes that we've done are in neighborhoods that are deeply, deeply disinvested. I just don't know how I said they are. So I would say that no, there hasn't been improvements yet because we're still trying to get the investments there. But the movement that has made is that there is more attention there. So at least there's more attention on the projects that are actually being asked of the community. And then there's also very much a real dynamic is that communities that we're going into don't necessarily feel like a, like biking infrastructure or a car free street is for them, right? And so the movement has been really in helping connect that this is an opportunity that the community can lead, right? And that it is an empowerment opportunity. They don't have to accept it. They can actually develop it in the way they want to that needle has moved. So those two, I would say have been improvements, but we're still fighting to see more permanent stuff in the neighborhoods that we're working in. Hi. Okay. So my name is Brian Sheridan, I work for the Coalition for Clean Air, AARP, great partner and CICLIVIA and everybody from lots of folks in this room. But you know, although I get to run California Clean Air Day, which is this whole behavior change thing I often think about policy and David, thank you for hitting on this. But I'm just curious about, you know, with now 150,000 people at, you know, being engaged in CICLIVIA, you know, where are we? Are we seeing now that folks at, you know, we saw it a little bit at the state level, but there are some real concrete at the local level, you know, where they're saying, hey, you know, now they're coming out to meetings more and the local city council member. And then the last question specifically, and I've known Romel for a long time, but I've never, I don't know if this is a rumor or the truth. Did Mayor Viragosa get hit by a car while biking to get him really engaged in the issue? And is there a lesson there for the way we engage our electives? He's spreading a rumor here, but I believe that is the truth. That's what Romel says. And Romel, who's our current executive director, was the champion in Mayor Viragosa's administration for our program. And there are people running that have had that experience, right? And so that's another conversation entirely. AARP does not, very quickly, does not support candidates, but I will just say the tone of conversations in city council meetings absolutely depends on who sits on those councils, as we all know. So great question there. I think too, in terms of, you know, going back to the, into the weeds of the act of transportation program and those kind of like grant programs where cities will apply for them. It's also worth bringing up to council, if you do, or to your council members or whoever, you know, in city hall you talk with, is to say, Hey, when was the last time that you applied for a grant? And what was it for? And you'll probably not like their answer, because they'll probably say, Oh, we're under staffed or, you know, we didn't have time to apply. But that's how you really, you know, get things done. I see a Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition shirt there. I was on their steering committee for a while when I lived in Pasadena. We, man, we were squeaky wheels with the city's Department of Transportation to say, When are you applying to this? We'll help you. We will do what it takes to get these things. And it didn't work all the time, but it was definitely worth voicing that and to really identify that a lot of these cities are just understaffed just in general, especially if you're a smaller city. So that's something to just, you know, really be squeaky about with your electeds. I know she's been. Hello. Okay. How have if you have worked with the slow streets initiatives and kind of build on top of each other, especially going back to the infrastructure question, or other existing events, programs, and civic initiatives for these events? Well, we serve as a platform for different civic initiatives, right? So play streets, not play streets. This is, I'm the wrong person to answer this question. But I, like we do a lot of stuff with Skag. They'll set up a crosswalk at our event. Thank you. Okay. Good. I knew that. I knew that Southern California Association of Governments. I did know that, but thank you. So that's one way we engage with different programs. The, well, just for San Francisco, I will say this is the biggest thing for everybody interested in trying to bring it to your own city. You are unique snowflake and it is going to be your own storm that brings it to your streets. So this is only for San Francisco, because it's just kind of how it went. But so our slow streets program was rolled out fully by the city and county of San Francisco. So in the Sunday streets program, we're a 501c3 non-profit. So it's just a slightly different mechanism. So we're actually pulling permits for that. The slow streets, they are there. It's a change in the street, right? And so that is kind of the city is managing that. We work very closely with them though. So in particularly the slow streets program in San Francisco, we worked with a lot of the actual just neighbors that were on the slow streets to talk to them about how to talk to their neighbors. For you here when you were mentioning kind of organizing your neighbors, right? So we kind of helped with that. So kind of direct help with neighbors. And we're now also in conversations with the transportation department SFMTA to be able to provide programming resources and things to the slow streets network, specifically the Play Streets program and how we can bring that out as a tool to bring the neighbors together and get more buy in for the slow streets network. And yeah, we are kind of very similar to you know in LA like we are just kind of a we're a civic institution too. So like a lot of things sort of pile on to us with us. We support various different programs around the city. And we also just know the the inner workings of San Francisco. So we also get a lot of random questions about like how can we make this program work? And we're like, well, let's let's go through our Rolodex. So yeah, we've tried, we try, we would love to work with the School of Districts. Again, this is particular to San Francisco. San Francisco Unified School District is very difficult to coordinate with in terms of outreach. So we valiantly try, but it hasn't necessarily been a great avenue of success for us at least. We have some success with individual schools. And we'll have some of the older kids like a high school volunteer on our route. But that's about as as far as we get with the schools. I want to thank you so much for the presentation. And I actually lived in Los Angeles for two years. And and Ciclavia was like the highlight of every quarter. I went there every time, especially the LA Phil the 100th anniversary. Yeah, I want to speak just to the to the kind of the radicalizing and the visioning that the Ciclavia and Open Streets events can show. It shows people like a different world and what we can do with our streets when when we open them to people. And I wanted to ask, you know, to what degree to what degree of any have you had you have partnerships with the bike in pedestrian advocacy organizations within your cities or counties? And do you feel like that has been productive? You know, so I work for a bike episode organ. There's no open streets event or in Marin County. So we're going to do it. We're going to have to do ourselves. Thanks. We do. But we're we work with our local bike at LACB. Oh my god, LACBC. Thank you. Thank you, guys. It's like numbers, I can tell you insurance. Let me tell you these things. But we're also really so we do work with these folks and we partner with different sponsors and different initiatives. We're not vocal advocates. And we're also streets for all rights. So we're not just about bikers. Sorry, guys. We're about pedestrians and wheelchairs and skaters and you name it. Everyone is welcome.