Potential but it needs bodies to react to the information. So what happened when we moved to the Transportation Management center and the new radio, we were running a call centre. An emergency or incident would come in the controllers would industrial on a piece of paper the key concern, they would dispatch somebody to respond to it. Our goal was to go from a call center to a Service Management center. But a few things happened. The first thing is the call volumes increased. This is very good news. It means it is now easier with the technology for our operatorses to reach the control sent center and to be able to ask for help and support. The second thing is the time for call increased. We now have the ability to track all this information digitally. But the Digital Information takes more time to enter than just scribbling on a piece of paper. But our Staffing Levels for various reasons remained relatively flat. So weve taken the same number of people. They are now managing more calls and more time per call. And then weve said why arent you line managing . They are not line managing because they have no bandwidth to do so. The second challenge is that managing this operator shortage has a lot of consequences but one of the consequence is that our supervision staff is spending a lot of their time balancing service filling runs begging people to come to work, trying to schedule overtime. That all impacts our ability to do more sophisticated Line Management training. The third challenge is that in creating a new controller position and this field manager position, we as i said, we are competing with ourselves. So we have not seen the transit supervisor classification grow. We also have a very High Percentage of that staff that is eligible for retirement. This chart shows that both the age breakdown and the retirement eligibility. So retirement eligibility kicks in when you have when you are 50 years old and you have 20 years of experience. Most people at the end are not retiring until they hit that 62year mark. But as you can see, within our transit supervisor classification, we have over 15 percent of our staff that are fully eligible to retire tomorrow and a huge percentage that are approaching retirement. And then the last thing is its hard to be a transit supervisor. One day youre an operator the next day you are managing operators. And while we have some training, its not enough. Its not enough to give transit supervisors new transit supervisors the skills they need to be really successful in that role. So what we are doing is, and i truly believe in investing in super supervision, coupled with solving the operator shortage, will be the most impactful thing that we can do to improve our Service Reliability, enhance our Customer Experience and also better support our operators who by far have the hardest job at our agency. The first thing well be doing is over this current fiscal year, we will be filling in existing vacancies and redirecting some vacancies to hire 50 new supervisors. That will help us with a lot of backfilling of needs and gaps. We will also be requesting an additional 50 positions in the fy21 budget as a way to focus on our core strategic goals. We are also working hard to continue to build a serviceoriented work culture to make sure that thinking about the Customer Experience is the first thing in the minds of our supervisors. And part of this we believe, will come from consolidating the training function. So to make sure that we have a single group that is responsible not just for new operator training, but for training our operations workforce to be successful in their role. And then the last piece is providing enhanced training to our supervisors both on the Line Management tools, which theyve been getting in pieces throughout and were able to spare them from the call Centre Functions but also on things like mentoring, Safety Compliance and some of the other key roles that they play. Now shifting to the 90 days plan. These are our core targets from the last 90day plan. When i come back, we will be increasing some of these targets, because as we have success we want to make sure we are continuing to move the line. We have seen a reduction in preventable collisions. Thats True Investments like making the rear of the vehicles more visible, giving operators more guidance onto how pull in and out of stops when blocked by cars and double parkers. We have also had some good success focusing on our infrequent routes where the schedule adherence is so important. And part of that has been through direct conversations with our operators on the work they do and really helping them to understand how important the leaving the terminal is on time for our customers. We have increased Service Delivery. We were at 96 percent in october. We are closer to 97 percent right now. We have not seen weve seen a little bit of a drop in our headway adherence on our frequent routes. Some of this is because we have shifted over and are focusing increased service on our equity routes. So well show you that we are tracking both of those. We did have six subway delays this month. Ill go through the details. Two of them were unavoidable. It was an earthquake and bart disruption but it still had an impact on our customers. In october we got close to meeting our lrv4 goal. We targeted 40 a day. Our goal is to have 48 of the new cars out on a daily basis. This shows the collision trend. But for a spike in july, we have been steadily declining. So we will be reducing this target for a second time as part of the current 90day plan. This shows the Service Delivery. As you can see, it is starting to scale up. We did have a class graduate in november, which is also providing relief and we will have another class graduate in january. For the major delays, in addition to the earthquake and to the bart incident, we did have three delays that were related to vehicles and to foreshadow my next item, they are an area of vulnerability for us. And while on a whole, we are seeing as good if not better miles between breakdowns than weve seen with this fleet its still too high. And then the last one and we are going to come in january with a presentation on what we are recommending for the new train control system, but we did have a hardware failure. The reason that a train control failure currently is such an extended delay, it took us 40 minutes is because we had to reestablish communications with every train in the subway. And that is unfortunately one of the design flaws or antiquated design aspects of our current automatic train control system. And its something that the new system as we continue to pursue it will not experience. Travel times back. And for the most part, pretty flat. But we did see an uptick on the klm. So what we are doing is revisiting all the investments that we made at west portal to make sure that they are Holding Strong and that we are proactively managing the intersection and doing everything we can to reduce delays between forest hill and west portal. But do you think that uptick is correlated to the west portal change or in spite of it . I believe in spite of it right. Okay. The trains are running better than the airconditioning in this building is what you are saying . [laughter] not just because im on the hot seat. This shows our continuing positive trend in vehicle availability. We are predicting to have 164 trains ready for service tomorrow which is absolutely the highest number that ive seen in my tenure at the agency. So we are excited about this. We are excited to be putting more trains in service and for the service to be available to our customers. Any three cars in that mix tomorrow . Not tomorrow. But soon. Very good. But not soon enough. As we look to our next 90day plan, which will wrap up at the end of january, we are focusing in five strategic areas. Safety and Service Reliability will continue to follow on key actions outlined by my managers. But we will not have any new initiatives for the subway. Our focus will be entirely on developing a twoyear plan with incremental improvements to the subway. It will include things like activating the west portal cross over, initiating a threecar shuttle replacing the remaining switches, switch machines in the subway. And it will map everything out for this board for feedback. That sounds like Christmas Morning to me. [laughter] we dont want to send the message that we think its very important to communicate to our customers and to you all as policy makers that while we are place replacing the train control system is a Critical Path item, there are a lot of things that we can do in the short term to improve the Customer Experience in the subway. So while that will allow us to have a Robust Service going into the future it does not mean that we are sitting on our hands for the next five to seven years waiting for that investment to materialize. Rail maintenances is our fourth area. And the last strategic area is to really take a focused look at employeegenerated Service Improvements and make sure that we are doing a big push to implement all the great suggestions that we get from operators and other staff along with route things like putting posts where we have double parking, trimming problematic trees and strengthening the feedback loop so the people that know that that have made the suggestion know their suggestion was followed up on. Theres been strong feedback weve gotten from our partners and something we are invested in making happen. And then the last thing i wanted to conclude with is a ridership update. We did see a slight drop in ridership in fiscal year 19, although i still think that theres some exciting positive trends. And i would put a strong emphasis on slight. Nationally, systems are seeing a lot of ridership loss, particularly because of things like tncs and other choices. Weve been able to hold our own. But getting some of these investments that weve been talking about on the ground is going to be critical to growing ridership which im optimistic that we will begin to do. Ridership on the rapid bus on our smaller connector routes that take people from the hilltops into the core system and express routes, we did see increase this fiscal year. Cable car observed the largest decline in ridership especially on the weekend. So thats something that we need to take a hard look at. You will see if you are following the graph a shift from trolly coach to motor coach. Thats not a ridership drop. Thats because of the motorizations we have underway to support the construction project. So thats just a shift thats not a drop. Taking a deeper dive into the various Service Categories we have more granular data on the bus system, because we do have automatic passenger counters on the majority of our fleet. The hundred or so that dont have it will get automatic passenger counters on the midlife overhauls. Whats pretty cool about the automatic bus counter is that tmc can track them in realtime. So we know how crowded all the vehicles are. So if we have to make a decision about turning back one bus or another, they can choose the bus that has the least customer impacts. So we did see a 3 percent increase year over year on our rapid bus and an he know bigger increase if you are looking between 17 and 19. We did see a slight drop on our local buses as well as our grid bus routes. Those are our long routes. They come relatively frequently. And they are i think by far having the hardest time compete ing with the other choices because they dont come very often and then they get stuck in traffic. This slide show cases some of our rapid investments. As i said looking back to 2017, we have seen a 14 percent increase in ridership with the largest gains being on the 28r and 5r. We did year over year see a slight decrease on bayshore geary and mission corridors but when you look over a twoyear trajectory its about a five percent increase. Soy continue to feel we are making investments in our service whether its through frequency or travel time improvements, that customers are reacting to that in a really favorable way. Not counted in our ridership because of the kind of Strict National reporting requirements is our special events ridership. I do want to flag that in addition to the 223 Million People that we carried on our regular service we also carried hundreds of thousands of people on our special events service. For example, we are carrying 35 to 40 percent of the gate at almost all chase concerts and basketball games, which is having i think an incredible benefit to making sure that we are not seeing a lot of congestion in the area, the hospital access is maintained and that we are getting People Places in a sustainable way. So thats i think, while not folded into the full number, it is i think an important piece of our overall ridership story. So thank you for indulging me the time. I wanted to make sure we covered a lot of these topics. Im happy to answer any questions that you have. Is there any Public Comment on this portion . One one. Please. Some questions. One is this report going to be reviewed by the muni task force . This is in essence, this is a presentation by a member of the management to the board to the public. But its an internal document. Its an internal presentation. I would like to see it subjected to review by the task force which ms. Borden is cochairman of. Two i noticed that as far as the Service Delivery goes buses are behind schedule, like the clement runs at 26 minutes when it should run at 20 minutes. And i think that its very uneven as far as the service goes. And three as far as the internal culture of mta its a real problem of bullying that goes on. Workplace bullying. And i would like to see this addressed. Because workbased bullying translates into poor Service Delivery. It affects productivity of an agency. And thats been proven by research. So we really need to address that and i know instances where bullying goes on. Its not a secret anymore. So this agency really has to start addressing it. And basically, i think what has to be examined is the command communication control structure and the operating systems. This really has to be subjected to review, because i think a lot of this problem has been externalize ed, and the service routes, bus stop consolidation the rest of it, when the problem always starts at home. Thank you. Thank you very much. One more Public Comment on this item. Welcome back. Thank you. I dont know what agenda item this is, but id like to get those charts. But my question is regarding hiring of new employees santa cruz sends out daily notices saying theres no service over the highway 17 from santa cruz to san jose employee shortage. Valley Transportation Authority basically had a slug of retirees you read their minutes people with 38 years, 30 years all retiring. And now that you got a daily email from vta saying well, expect expect no service on these lines. So with the low employment, unemployment, im reading the charts, and weve got all these expectations of hiring. And im saying, you know, you got problems in the south bay and other transit agencies how do we expect to overcome that to be able to meet these goals of increasing our Employment Opportunities for the training. So i just want to put on the radar screen theres other transit agencies that are experiencing service delays. And they are putting it out there every day saying these are the three lines or whatever that are not providing adequate service. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Mason. All right. Any more Public Comment on this . Okay. Is there anyone else who wants to speak on this item . Seeing none, this will be our last public speaker on this item. Actually, i have a question about my Public Comment. I was coming here to talk about the lrv seating but that has not been discussed yet. Next item. It will be. But i have an appointment to go to. I promise you it will be the next one. So how long will it take because i have an appointment to get to . Could i just give my testimony now . Because i have to go. I have an appointment. Its the next item. We are going to call it as soon as Public Comment for this item is concluded. This one . Okay. Because im going to have to get to another appointment. We understand. If you would like to put it in writing, you can absolutely submit it. In case theres not time. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Directors, any questions or comments . Director heminger. Ill be brief. First i wanted to ask about the retirees. A hundred per year. Is there any way within the citys retirement system that we can offer these folks some incentive to stick around for a couple . Even under your best case its a couple years before we are back to a hundred. I wanted to clarify. Its not a hundred retirements. Because some of them are people leaving prior to retirement. But it is the majority, in the order of 70. We do offer people that are retiring that have a good attendance and Safety Record an opportunity to come back, what we call prop f. It allows you to take your Retirement Benefits but then also be paid the hourly wage for your work. We are only allowed to use you for 1,000 hours a year but it still really help helps. So we have been able to attract some talent to stay that way but it hasnt been particularly fruitful. Im familiar with retired annuitantss but is there an incentive we could explore within the retirement structure that would permit that . Vicechair gordon and i could bring that up on friday because well have the director of hr for the city there to help answer questions yeah, because you go through a tremendous amount of work to get people trained and recruited and all that stuff, and as was pointed out by the last bit of testimony we have, we are competing against two dozen transit operators around the region. So i think ill limit myself to that one comment. Thank you. Great presentation. The collision Reduction Program its good to remind ourselves things that we do in other items help toward that. I know the upcoming lane reduction on california street thats being considered, a lot of those lane reductions weve done are to help the buses prevent those avoidable collisions, correct . That is so true. For example a key focus of the Mission Street project was to go from four very narrow lanes to three wider lanes. We went from having two to four collisions just in that segment a week to much less frequent in the order of one or two a month. All right. So its a good thing to remind ourselves that other actions we take help you reach those goals. You pointed out that i think you said 50 percent of our operators have fire years of service or less. And you reminded or asked the operators who were there that mentoring and the buddy system really helps because helping those operators with less experience by giving them access to the wisdom of the operators who have been there a long time are really good. In terms of the hiring one of the things we can do is the employer of choice, so we can do things like the lane reduction that makes it safer for the operators to drive the bus. Anything we can do to make us a better system to drive for helps us keep those employees. So lets all remember that as we talk about parking removal that tight turn intersections, things like that, make it less stressful to be an operator and help them stay on the job. So thank you again. You are doing a great job. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Anyone else . All right. A few things, if i may. First of all im very excited to hear about the west portal crossover finally being activated. You know theres a pet project of mine, and im happy to hear that. I think we clearly see our customers speaking that Rapid Service is what they are being attracted to so not to take you back to your job like three jobs ago when we were doing a transit effectiveness project. We cant ignore that fact, that this is something where our ridership is going up. I realize theres a lot of moving parts to that including service and equity. But i think as we look at routes even existing routes, there may be room to expand Rapid Service. Finally, several meetings ago i asked you and your staff to look at the notion of turning the j church back aboveground and not having the j church enter the tunnel for purposes of reducing tunnel congestion and probably increasing the amount of train servicing the surface spots on the line. Ive heard some positive reaction to that. Can you tell us where we are in your planning and reaction to that request and where it is . Yeah. We are looking at a j church that doesnt go into the subway during daytime Service Hours essentially from the beginning of the morning till kind of the end of the pm peak. We need to do a lot of Public Outreach to hear what folks have to say about that. But weve gotten some initial positive feedback in particular from supervisors office. And one of the benefits that hes been talking about with his stakeholders is a more reliable j. Right. So if we could reinvest some of the service that we are now spending delayed at the portal and delayed at getting into the subway and run a more frequent and more Reliable Service then the impact of having to transfer becomes less. We also think that that work is linked to the west portal crossover because part of asking folks to transfer is that you need to make sure they have space in a vehicle. So having a threecar frequent shuttle in the subway we think is key to that too. So its very preliminary. We need to have more community discussions. We we think it has the potential to not only improve service for our j line customers but to address the subway congestion address delays on the n line as it goes into the subway. So we will be asking some folks potentially to transfer that are not currently transferring. But we think we can do it in a thoughtful way. And then the biggest focus that sean kennedy and his team are looking at now is what, if any enhancements we need to make at church on market for accessibility and to be able to manage the hundreds of people that get lost at its busiest point. So we are at an early discussion and Design Review stage. Okay. Well, im thrilled to hear that. One thought i had on that management is what if its raining . Is there something to keep people dry as they make that small but important trip. Weve talked about the choke points in the system at van ness west portal. This is something that will affect all three of those right . Because if we are crossing trains at west portal, thats fewer training going into the circle. If we are not putting a train into the system at van ness, that relieves that congestion and we know very well, if if you have fewer js you relieve pocket congestion. I think this is very exciting. Im encouraged do hear the supervisor from the district is open to it. Im glad you are planning it. I would urge you to go forward with it. I think this is something that is easy to test and could have a very very Significant Impact on the reliability of our service. Thank you. Okay. That closes item number 7. Would you please call item number 12 and be advised im going to take Public Comment out of order. Thank you. Execute contract modifications. Contract 201319 procurement of new light rail vehicles. Operator cap featuring engineering refinements that improve fleet performance to accelerate fleet replacement with no increase to the total cost and no increase in the term. Do we have any Public Comment on this item . Yes you have three speakers okay. Edward mason. Hold on. Would you please come forward and speak first please . Thank you. I will give you your option to speak now or wait until the staff presentation but i want to accommodate our friend who is needing to leave i appreciate that. We have a longattended item before this. Understood. Please. I want to address the seating on the. Whats your name . Robin crop. Is this echoing too much . We can hear you per electly i want to address the seating on the lrv training in the current breed of trains there are 20 transfer seats. And nine longitudinal ones for a twotoone ratio. Anyone who needs a transfer seat can generally get one including asking for one. However the plans for the next 50lrv cars are calling for four single transfer seats. And the rest being the sideways ones which is about 20 percent down to a 20 percent of the current transfer seat numbers than what we have currently. The plans for the next 101 is only for eight transfer seats which is going to be 40 percent of the car seats will be transfers. However, our riders are diverse. Some are ablebodied and some are not. So the ablebodied people can do anything. And those of us who are not cant. Im disabled. I cannot stand, i cannot sit sideways. I must have a forward seat. My concern is that these cars will fill up immediately and we wont be able to ride. Well be eliminated from being able to access any transfer seat and also well be injured on them, those of us with physical disabilities can be injured. Plus we are dealing with other languages. So we cant communicate with people in russian, et cetera. But, you know fragile seniors and other languages like its full of elderly chinese seniors we cant talk to each other. And if its going to be four transfer seats how do we know what our needs are for accessing . So without being able to have enough transfer seats we wont be able to ride so id like to ask for is that it . That is your time ill submit the rest in writing because i have suggestions. Thank you very much. I didnt get to them. Okay. If the other Public Commenters would like to speak now you are welcome to do so. If you would like to wait until after the presentation you can do so. Edward mason. Is cat carter hoo here . She left the only speaker is edward mason. Its 4 35 and director torres is uncharacteristically yankee. [laughter] cranky. Im kidding, im kidding. We have taken the last six months to get the lrv4 program back on track so to speak, and to make sure we are making steady progress to deliver the reliable trains that San Francisco deserves. It has not been an easy period. Weve had a lot of challenges. But im very optimistic that as we go into the new year that we are really going to see some significant improvements, and we are already seeing, i think some very promising results. So im here today to talk about some early steps to get the next phase of the lrv4 project going. These are long lead time items. The reason we are bringing them to you now is because without action now we will not be able to shave off time from the replacement, and we will end up having these vehicles well past 2026. Some of the recent progress we did and this is a photo. I did have the opportunity to address the entire factory along with vicechair borden and thank them for their hard work. It was exciting to hear from the engineer there which basically confirmed that San Francisco has the most complex vehicle on the team has designed between our hills and tight turns and weight restrictions, we really challenged them. And they were very excited about that. We still have two vehicles that are at siemenss. They are the First Vehicles we worked the hardest to break, and they are now getting all the upgrades they helped inform. We also have three vehicles that are and we have seven vehicles on hold because the wheels have flattened out. So part of this item is to move forward the investment in the track brakes. Our biggest breakdown issue over the last couple months has been the hydrollic power unit, which was causing the brakes to lock up. Im pleased to report we have addressed that issue. It was a fleet defect. It is covered under warranty. We needed to both replace a Circuit Board as well as do a software update. Weve addressed the problem on about 45 percent of the fleet. Weve done 29 vehicles. And im pleased to report we have no instances of this breakdown this was making up 40 to 45 percent of our breakdowns since we have on the upgraded vehicles. That being said, we are going to continue to find issues and to need to work through them. One emerging issue that we are tracking closely is some increased overhead wire wear. And we are seeing an area where it appears to be scraping. So because of the impact that it has on the Overall Health of our system, we are monitoring this very closely, and we are going to be equipping some key locations with cameras to try to understand what the challenges are there. We did for all practical purposes, meet our 90day goals. We are currently delivering on average about 40 vehicles a day with the goal of 48 by the end of january. We also are back on track to the trajectory to get us to 25,000 miles between breakdowns. For the first two weeks of november we are at about 9500, which is triple where we were this summer in terms of miles between breakdowns. So while i believe we still need several more months before we fully execute the contract, i am very positive on the trajectory that we are on. The item thats before you today is a contract modification the value of 9. 8 million. It is to address three types of changes. The first is to do some highpriority retrofits of the phase 1 expansion vehicles. The highest ticket item being the track brakes, putting additional track brakes on the front and back of the vehicle will prevent the vehicle the brakes from flattening when we have emergency brakes. And it will significantly improve the vehicle availability. This is also something that has very strong support from our operators and our union very much would like to see the additional track brakes installed. We have installed ten successfully. And we are seeing very promising results. The second item is to start the long lead time engineering items. We are making very significant changes to the seating design of the vehicles. And in order to keep to the expedited schedule, we really need that engineering to start. And then the third thing is that in order for siemens to increase production, they are creating a separate facility to build our car shells. And so giving them the resources now about 20 percent of the resources, 5 million on a overall cost of 25 million to Start Building those car shells is critical again to keep the expedited schedule. We will be bringing a seventh contract modification on the order of about 50 million for the final execution of the phase ii vehicles this spring but only after weve had another several months of continuous progress. Just to refresh you on the seating design, we have a lot of discussion about this last winter and spring. In general, we have very Strong Customer satisfaction on this vehicle. We did an intercept survey, and people who were satisfied or very satisfied outmatched people who were not satisfied 4 to 1. But we have heard several themes of concern. One is the height of the seats. The second is that the seats are slippery theres no butt indents. Afraid i didnt think i would ever say. Is that a professional transit term . [laughter] you learn something every day. The third is there were no forwardfacing seats that it was all bench seating. In order to accommodate the concerns as well as not have to completely reengineer the vehicle, we are recommending a compromise. So the first 50 seats would be a single row of forwardfacing on half the vehicle. The reason for that is that they are not a significantly difference in weight. So it does not require a complete redesign of the car shell. While those are being built, it will give time to design the second double row of transverse seats. If i can ask a question on those there seems to be a concave what do you call that thing . [laughter] he just wants you to say butt again. We are also recommending the lowering. Foiled by my nemesis to the european left. [laughter] we will be dropping three quarters of the seats, adding hand grabs of different lengths like theyve done at bart. We have several Community Requests for kind of a sky view of the seats. Before my silliness. Well ask sftv to return to the powerpoint. So for the single row seats we will on each vehicle have 12 forwardfacing seats six on each end of the car, four of them are on the front of the car and then two of them are behind the second door. We do we have also gotten advice from Community Members that they would like to see more blue seats reserved for people with disabilities. So we will be working with matt west and our Accessibility Department to help determine that. And then this next photo shows the double seats. So it does increase the number of seats. We will be also retrofitting the existing vehicles to the single seat configuration. Again, it is relatively big ticket item. And it will take vehicles out of service. But we heard a strong request to modify, not just the new seats that are coming, which is relatively Cost Effective but also to retrofit the existing. The project schedule is shown here. The schedule in the contract is fairly spread out based on the procurement of them. They were bought slowly because we did not have the funds to buy them faster. We have received per fission from the fta to retire some of these vehicles early. I think it is the best thing we can do in terms of the fleet performance. We are having tremendous challenges keeping these vehicles in a state of good repair in fact because they did not have a full midlife, which will be important to do with our new railcars and in part because of parts being obsolete and things like that. So the new proposal would have all the vehicles delivered by the end of 2025. And this chart shows it would also reduce the amount of time that we are maintaining two fleets. And in particular it would mean that we dont have to design the new train control system for the old trains which adds considerable amount of cost and complexity to that project. We do have some ongoing work. There is still a poll at the front door that does need to be redesigned. And weve gotten feedback that it makes it more challenging for people who are using wheelchairs to get on and off the vehicle. We are working with the operators who this is the first vehicle that they are using a camera monitor instead of mirrors. While weve made some enhancements we are looking at a new system that has a much larger monitor and working closely with operators on that feedback. The customer information, while it is better than anything weve ever had on our trains, we could could be sexier. So we are looking at some of our options to have enhanced customer information on our trains. And then as i said, looking at more blue seats. Who knew this would be the raciest item on our agenda . [laughter] i didnt try to get in on that one. Sheryl would have really had i should have known better. We have no higher priority than to continue all the good work that janet and her team are doing to improve the reliability and availability of these vehicles. And as i said weve made tremendous progress, and we are going to continue to make good progress. But overoar seeing the initial retrofit work and getting ready for the replacements are also important actions, which is why we are bringing you this item today. Wonderful. This is very exciting. Always welcome another chance to see another photo of director borden the most photographed sfmta board member. [laughter] this is really exciting. So before we have any comments or questions, mr. Mason, and well finish Public Comment. If there is anyone else who wanted to speak on this item, please follow mr. Mason. Yep, please after mr. Mason. Thank you. Edward mason. This is a billion dollar project over 30 years. And there should be a fiduciary responsibility in the procurement specification by having workshops to expand and clarify the requirement. Operator maintenance and enhancements after the fact reflect a lack of collaboration initially. And now its costing us additional money. The original cars were four people were square yard whereas now for three additional inches we are now putting six people per square meter. Now theres statements such as the passenger emergency stop, i dont know what reading the documentation but on the intercom i think we would want to put signage with instructions as there are on other vehicles, to say you are on car number xyz because if you are going to be in a train communicating with the operator you better know which car you are on. The seating section, everything we are going to lower the seat, right . We are going to put a bench seat in. Are we going to lower the bench seat because theres no electronic box there thats going to keep the higher seat. Less than half the fleet is going to have double transfer seats 101 of the 2019 seats. In the articulation section, passengers sit on the articulation ribs. So i assume thats not going to be a problem because we are not talking about that. But i have observed people sitting on there. Open space. Why do the procurement specification require space for bicycles . On there we could have seats and also i think that the folding seats bottom line is on the blue seats for the priority they should be closer to the doors. And that really needs to be a priority. Because you only have the priority seats at the front. And ive seen peoplepeople board the vehicle with extended wheelchairs with their feet out at an angle creating problems. Thank you. Do you want to speak . Its a long day and ill be brief. Please may i have your undivided attention . Thank you. One question i want to put forward are the contours of the seats going to change . Because they are extremely uncomfortable. And also if theres a sudden stop, you can really people can really be jerked forward. So i just want to make sure that those seats, which are extremely uncomfortable on the coach are changed. And frankly, the one i ride the more i ride the siemens, the more i miss the freighter. Any more questions . The one comment i have is thank you for everything that you did in response to all my comments. And i really appreciate it. Im looking forward to riding the newlyconfigured train and appreciate the responsiveness. One of the reasons to have single seating at least on one side is to have the ability to have three people stand across the train fuselage instead of two. Correct. In addition to the feedback on the seats which you have received and dealt with, thank you again, the inability for the person in the middle of those three people to hold onto something has been an expressed concern. In this redesign, is there some sort of idea of a overhead bar or pulldown system so the person in the middle of the three has something to hold onto . Yes okay. And this is like im leading the witness. Can you tell us what that is. Objection. [laughter] sorry. Its been so long that weve been working on this item that i momentarily forgot what we included. But we did include an arch. It will require, i think, some very at all people over 6 5 will have to duck, but it is a lower height than the signage on the vehicle. So there will be a place for folks to hold onto to better utilize that middle space. Excellent. Okay. Just wanted to make sure we were clear on the record that that change is coming too. So with that, i have no further comments. I just want to compliment you guys for accommodating so many different concerns. Because i know as a wheelchair user i want open space. And other people want more seating to accommodate their disability. And disability or no we all have such different needs and wants i think you have stuck a really responsible and appropriate balance with all the competing interests, keeping us on track for delivery of the vehicles and keeping it within a reasonable price tag. So thank you so much for your work. Im going to interpreter that in a motion of support. Yes. A second. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed . Thank you. Onto item 13. Appointing tumlin as the new director effective december 16 2019 and approving the execution of employment agreement including a term ending december 31, 2024 with an annual compensation of 324,000. Benefits equivalent to specified benefits to members of the executive management bargaining unit under the 2019 2022 memorandum of understanding between the sfmta and the Municipal Executive Association and a oneyear severance pay. Move to approve. Well hold on. [laughter] ive got legal requirements here. Oh, okay. So no more objections. [laughter] do we have Public Comment on this item . You have one this agenda item is to discuss and take possible action to approve a employment agreement. The employment agreement has been available for public inspection and is included in the board materials. The code requires the board to orally report a summary of the composition in the form of Fringe Benefits before taking final action. The board provides the following summary through me. The proposed agreement sets a salary of 324,383. Tumlin will receive Fringe Benefits equivalent to benefits to employees represented by the missal executive association as a memorandum of understanding between the sfmta the fullest of benefits is set forth. The key benefits include five days of paid management leave recognized legal holidays, vacations as specified in the code, 13 days of sickleave per year as provided in the charter management of flexible spending Health Account and for heather benefits 50,000 Life Insurance policy and reimbursement for memberships. Mr. Tumlin whom some call jeff will receive Retirement Benefits according to the applicable provisions of the San Francisco charter. Under the charter, mr. Tumlin is responsible for paying required contributions to the sf employees retirement system. Okay. Now that i have fulfilled my duties under the government code and made my friend roberta and susan happy, i would if i may like to turn it over to the person who so ably chaired our Search Committee and got us this wonderful candidate for some comments. Anybody second my motion . Well get there director eaken. Thank you so much. I want to say what a privilege and honor it has been to chair this committee. I want to thank chair heinicke in particular for trusting me. I have enjoyed getting to know the staff of the agency and hearing your concerns as well as hearing from stakeholders. And i will admit when we started this process in june of this year it seemed a daunting task. We heard from many this is the hardest job in the transportation industry. And we are very fortunate to hear from many stakeholders. We heard from over 750 individuals through this survey. We met with over 100 individuals. And i just wanted to take a moment to remind everybody of the themes we heard as a Search Committee again and again. People talked about wanting to have a leader who is decisive. Someone who is a team builder and excellent manager who will unite the divisions of the sfmta into one cohesive team. Someone will will stand up to political pressure and have staff to drive ambitious projects. Someone who will take equity and inclusion seriously and not put up with harassment in the workforce. Someone who embodies vision zero. If you read the fine print and see the contract runs through december 31, 2024 and that is our deadline for hitting vision zero. I think thats really fitting. And i hope we are up to the challenge. Finally, people want an excellent communicator to build coalitions with diverse stakeholders across the bay area. So i want to acknowledge there is no person we could have chosen that will make every single stakeholder happy. And ill just acknowledge that right now. But that said, i want to reassure you everyone listening, that the Search Committee engaged in extremely Extensive International search process and that we were delighted at the caliber and diversity of the candidates that we received who were interested in this position. And i want to reassure you the Search Committee is unified in the perspective that jeff tumlin is the candidate who most ably fits all the desired qualifications weve heard from everybody. So i wanted to share a very few some of the things ive heard from people who have worked with jeff in the past to help people get to know him. Weve heard that this is someone who ensures a diversity of perspectives are at the table and digs into ideas and finds outcomes that work for everyone. This is someone who is able to engage in a deep way with a variety of constituencies finding paths forward that work for all. Someone who is able to hold the line where necessary, absolutely open and inclusive and engaging people and seeking solutions. And finally someone who wants to stretch minds and imaginations challenging his colleagues to do great things. So im so excited for everyone involved and i can confidently say i recommend and i vote without reservation. I want to take a moment to do some thanks. I want to thank directors heminger and torres for your generous leadership on the committee. I think we got a stronger outcome because of your involvement and it was a pleasure to work with you. I want to thank secretary boomer for other support and partnership. She knows the agency inside and out like nobody else and her participation was invaluable. I want to recognize sheryl of alliance for taking my phone calls many nights a week at 9 00 whether or not her child was taking a bath at the time. And being a true partner overall stefani of hr and also susan for making sure we are aware of all the regulations and add here to the regulations in our committee dialogue. Obviously we have to thank chire heinicke, vicechair borden and the full board of it our expert guidance and advice. We got a stronger outcome because of your participation. I want to thank the interested candidates who were courageous and willing