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Transcripts For SFGTV MTA Board Of Directors 20200203

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indicated an interest in addressing you on this topic. >> great. >> with that said, all in favor of our minutes. approved as written. aye. any opposed? motion carries. communications. >> clerk: i have none. there was a member of the public, sir, if there's no communications this is not for public comment. >> clerk: item 6, unfinished business by board members. >> are there nominations for the position of chair? >> yeah. >> are are we taking it up today? >> are we taking it up today? >> nominations for chair. >> thank you. >> is it there a second. >> second. >> ok. is there any other nominations? i was going to nominate our current chair, this is for chair? i was going to nominate our current chair, dr. hine. >> kevin: s there any discussion among the directors. >> i was confused. i thought i was going to be vacant soon and therefore you would be ready for nominations. do you want me to with hold off? >> that's fine. >> ok. >> can we review the tenure time cycle per director torres comments. >> we can put this off if you want, chair, present to have that discussion. >> just a simple logistical question. >> what's your question? >> it's given that we're electing a chair and vice-chair. can you remind us of the time horizon on the board. >> we have two directors whose terms expire this year. director hinike and the directors whose terms have expired may continue to serve on the board for an additional 60 days and so, that would take unl the end of april. >> ok. >> so we're just taking nominations through the end of april right now. we're not trying to plan for the calender year of 2020. >> i mean, i will respectfully withdraw. the truth is, that does not how we have to do things. we can do it anyway we want. ultimately in respect to the desire to stay chair until the end of his tenure, i'm willing to respect that. it would be better to have all the information parties present in the immediating and -- >> we can either, if people want to have -- i'm willing to withdraw and not accept director torres' nomination to just make it simpler. >> when do we need to make this? >> the mta rules of order state there will be an election of officers scheduled for the first meeting after the 15th of january. and director -- >> can i ask a follow-up question. at the end of the term on the board, we can at that pointy elect officers or elect a new chair and vice-chair at that point in time. >> yes. >> yes, that would be the case. >> obviously if i were to be chair it would be who is the vice-chair? >> therefore -- >> this board would determine, i guess it's based on seniority who the vice-chair would be or whatever and the chair and then move forward. is that appropriate? is everybody ok with that? >> i don't see any -- i mean, i guess city attorney, is there any reason that they have to be separate motions and i don't know if they need to be separate motions. >> any motion to elect malcolm as vice-chair and you don't need to have the word until an election is needed because when malcolm is off the board, there will be need to be an election for chair. >> yes. >> because there's no provision for the vice-chair to step in in the event of a vacancy. >> there's a motion. is there a second to the motion? >> second. >> all in favor. >> aye. >> any opposed? >> before you do that, public comment. >> sorry, public comment on the motion. the motion is to nominate chair heinicke and me to be vice-chair? any public comment. >> i have not received any speaker card and it doesn't look like anyone is approaching the podium. >> seeing none, public comment is closed. >> all those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> any opposed. the motion passes. >> thank you. >> i announced 19 new can piece going on our shared muni stations. they had a pilot with sites one being downtown at powell street. they plan on building out can pee that's will be -- when they approve the contract this week the ghost of the construction company will work on the timeframe and the goal was to have all those installed by 2026. it was neat. the can pee has a gate that comes down to lock completely and it's already shown a 30% reduction in the escalators not being effected and we struggle with our escalators and we look forward to that work moving forward. are there any other items from board members? >> seeing none. moving on. >> item 7, director's report. >> good afternoon. i am so happy to have made it through my first month on this job. [laughter] >> the themes of our work here are clear and i will be framing much of next week's conversation around the budget, around the themes of where the agency is struggling and where it is being unexpectedly amazingly successful and the relationship between those two themes. so, stay tuned on that. in the meantime, today i will cover vision zero, central subway and better market street but first up, we have julie with her director's report on the transit side of the house. >> >> we need to have a rehearsal. >> exactly my point. [laughter] >> hi, everyone. good afternoon. it is my pleasure today to be recognizing our transit mechanical systems program. as of january 2019, this group took over, in addition to their other responsibilities, the subway infrastructure maintenance. this has -- this has increased our ability to maintain our subway stations and our critical life safety. it builds also on our elevator and escalator programs. what i'm excited about with this team is that to me, they really embody the characteristics na i want all my teams to have. they have a positive attitude, they collaborate in everything that they do, and they are always looking for out of the box ideas. we have a complicated system. some of our subway infrastructure they're finding hasn't been touched in 40 years so sometimes you get to test one thing and three other things break and so, the thoughtfulness of their approaching their work, i'm really excited about it. i'm here to honor them today, specifically for how they handled the december 7th flood where the heavens opened up and the subway only flooded because there was snee high water on the surpass at church and market and during that time, there was no train service and this team responded quickly and did everything that they could to get our system back up and running and the next day that it was, but more importantly, following that incident, they took critical steps to protect the system from a similar event in the future and i think last week's rain where we activated the flood watch, which is one of the preventative steps they took, i'll use it as an example. joe bozi, on our graveyard last night, wouldn't be here. he worked with brian ball and dan alger and they installed a second pump in the church sub pump room. this required some creative engineering because there was barely enough space to have the pump in there let alone a person trying to install the pump. tina literally did every physical task required to support the team and frank oversaw the response of the subsequent work so i wanted to have a chance to honor them today and for you to see just one of the many teams that keeps our system up and running, rain or shine. >> thank you. do any of you want to say a word. we're so obviously -- all of us who depend on the subway system and how it impacts the larger system, we're not thankfulness for your thoughtfulness, hard work and willing to keep it at to figure out ways we can make sure we don't have these problems in the future. >> anybody? >> i can't miss the opportunity to say a couple words. this is pretty fancy stuff. on behalf of the team, thank you so much for taking the time to really honor and recognize the work that this team does. the dedication and commitment that these guys show each and everyday december 7th another example sim press i have so thank you for taking the time to do that. you do show up and it's really impressive the work you do. so, way to go and keep it up, we'll be up here for more of these. [laughter] >> so, yeah, thank you for your time and thank you. >> thank you. >> director torres, did you want to address. >> i was saying hello. >> so carrying on, vision zero. as perhaps you've seen in the press, we had two fatalities on the streets since our last board meeting. both of those are still under investigation so we have limited information. that said, we sent out our rapid response team than those for the serious injury crashes including one at 43rd and full ton where we've already begun doing some additional daylighting and in addition to the larger traffic signal heads that we had been already installing. you have also heard about the incident at embarcadero where a 69-year-old woman on a scooter, which we'll talk about later, had an interaction with a large truck on the bike way resulting in a severe injury. kc from our sustainable streets team will show a preview of the next workshop for bigger ideas about larger fixes for the embarcadero. >> casey, livable streets. thank you. >> thank you. >> so, we can get the screen for a couple slides. just briefly. i wanted to bring up the embarcadero in general and we'll come back again at the next boarding to get into much more detail. just want to echo and call out that the embarcadero is a clear priority for the agency and our vision zero program. it is at our high injury network. the handful of streets that lead to the most severe and fatal injuries and we've been working actively with the port over a number of years to address safety as we can. as well as building towards a larger vision for what the waterfront should be in the future and have been active with a lot of outreach. that vision includes establishing a two-way water side physically protected bike way. along with other upgrades including ada accessibility upgrades, some other circulation changes that simplify intersections and to improve safety and efficiency and that vision is going to be complicated to reach in the short term and any sort of holistic way. there are pretty significant capital investment needs and mentality of spirit andel policies and in particular at the site of the collision last week at bay and pier 35, we are working with the port on a small to protect the existing northbound bike way. we did stop and did a vision zero rapid response to make sure we're learning from this collision and incorporate tag into this proposal. we are making near-term changes in response to that collision and that rapid response. but then, that is only part of a much larger program that we're trying to roll out and identify and that includes another quick bill proposal closer to the ferry building trying to tie in the work we're doing on howard and fulsome to our nearest transit center. talking about the larger project and we're undergoing ceqa review and we'll get into those details. and they want to make sure we're not just focusing on engineering but talking about education and enforcement other ways that we can bring that message to the waterfront. and we also have another series of studies closer and up towards fisherman's warf so we want to come back in a couple of weeks to talk about the larger program and the reason why you haven't seen this. it is under port jurisdiction so we've been working closely with staff and the port commission up to this pound. soul hear more from me in a couple weeks. >> thank you. it's such an important connection. as we heard a lot, are gender imbalance in the psyching community is heavily weighted. there's not as people that identify as female cycling on our streets. i've seen the future in the past few weeks with the new electric assist bikes backout from lyft, the combination means we don't have as many people willing to ride. thank you for the work. i look forward to seeing and i'll just remind us and all be bold and let's do this and people's lives really depend on it. thank you again. >> thank you. >> any other directors? >> if we can bring the slides up again. i'd like to give an additional shout out to other members of our quick build team that have been making rapid progress in providing protected bike ways on fifth street from market to town send as well as on 17th street filling the gap from 16th to townsend. that's fifth street before and next slide -- fifth street under construction and next -- this is a portion of seventh street before you can see the on street parking and next -- seventh street beginning some dramatic improvements on the projects we've seen so far we're seeing significant increases in ridership and over the coming year, south of market from market street to townsend may be the densest network of lanes in the united states. we'll be, as you know, we legislated significant additional improvements in the soma grid and we'll work on those later this year. the next topic is the scared scooter permit program update. i'm sure you've seen the increase in scooters as well as the ways which our revised regulations are improving on some of the poor behavior that we've seen in previous years during other phases of the program. so one of the other aspects of our new regulations is the requirement for adaptive scooters kicked in this month. and all of the providers will be providing an array of adaptive scooter devices that accommodate a range of disabilities so whether it's people who can sit but not stand or folks who have balance issues and need three wheels. people well cognitive disabilities and need different accommodations. all four of the providers are experimenting with a different array of vehicle times as well as ways of distributeing and reserving those vehicle types. we'll be collecting a lot of information about utilization of those services together with the mayor's office of disability and using the pilot program findings in order to revice th revice tht round of permitting. we are excited. we have inspired quite a lot through the partners of our city of oakland. the next stop i can is the central subway. we're continuing to make rapid progress. if you haven't been down to the tunnel recently, i'll be happy to arrange tours. it's fascinating watching the finishes go up. the art being installed and the connections between bart and the subway being created. so power got turned on at the union square, market street station. we are coming to you next month for some additional change orders for the new train control system. train control technology has changed since we first budgeted this project. so far, we're still expecting substantial completion of the project june of this year with revenue operations starting later in 2021. i'm not commit to go a date yet. there's still a couple of risk factors that i want to get to the bottom of. progress is being made. the final topic and one we're very excited about and hope we can join you on is the better market street quick build ribbon cutting. starting the morning of january 29th, market street east of tenth street, will be closed to private cars while remaining open to bus and people on bikes and people on foot and in a whole variety of other host of taxicabs. there are many reasons for this project. half of the top 10 most dangerous intersections in san francisco or on this street and it's 75% are involving people who are walking or biking. you can see some of the initial work that some members of the community and the bike coalition have captured for us and sent in that are owned, city crews are out there doing and have been doing since last week. you will be seeing the signs going up and the signs are currently covered but those signs will be indicating the turn and vehicle restrictions. some of which have already been unveiled. we hope that you all and the public will be able to join us on january 29th at the foot of market street. market street stewart, that is my report. thank you. >> thank you. >> directors, any other questions? >> back on the central subway, if we're closing in on five months from substantial completion, we ought to be getting pretty close to -- >> so, what we have is the contractors' cost and in some of those costs, we are not 100% confident those are the right numbers. so we're doing our own work to make certain that the cost overruns that the contractors has incurred that those are overruns we can defend and feel confident about before we ask for additional public funding. that work is on going. we brought in additional cost estimators to help us and i'm told any day now. >> so that means the february board meeting? is that what it means? >> that's my target. it will be february but again until we get to the bottom of exactly cost numbers that we're comfortable defending, i don't want to schedule a commitment. that work needs to be finished before i can come to you. >> i guess the question that comes up in my mind and look, i thought we were sort of done with this in september but i guess we're not -- does it make any sense to bu to to bifurcatee issues? does it make sense in settling those and moving ahead and waiting to deal with the places where there's disagreements? >> and that is one of the options that we're considering. my goal would be to take it all to you as a package. if there are numbers that are disputed for too long, i will have to bifurcate so that we can make sure that the contractor, and particularly the contractor subcontractors can get paid for their completed work. >> thank you for the update. people are looking forward to this date. and just want to be sure that we have thought through issues of enforcement as much education outreach as we've done and working with the app providers. there will be some confused drivers out there and wanting to make sure this is a really successful roll out so we wanted to ask about that. maybe i'll pause and get to the second question. >> so our crews have reached out to all of the mapping services. the mapping services know exactly all the coded turn restrictions and driving restrictions. we're also collaborating with the san francisco police department around enforcement. starting with a lot of information. we want to give motorists the chance to adjust to this change so we're planning on not just issuing citations but describing how the rules have changed and why and giving everyone a chance in the traffic patterns a chance to adjust. as you probably know, for moving violations, the san francisco police department is responding we have no moving violations for making illegal turns or driving where you are not supposed to drive. we'll also be using, however, our own parking control officers to help direct traffic, give out information, and manage the new parking rules as you may have heard, we've made substantial changes to the parking regulations to ensure that all businesses along market street still have ample pick up and drop off opportunities for deliveries as well as for passengers. >> so there's a phase-in period where it says a citation and education and some point later it would be enforcement moving violation. >> the second piece is just spurred by your comments about this scooter share program and i just wanted to share that i received a really interesting briefing, and the idea there is, it really is to try to put all of the new mobility and existing mobility services together in a way that offers people an alternative to car ownership and so it's transit is a partner there and i think some of the scooters companies are partners and zip cars are providing car share and accessibility and it was one of the best examples that will i had seen of attempting to put all on one platform, which is the transit app and all mobility option that's someone might need. it just made me think about parking and how much of our conversations are about the work that we need to do to make our streets supportive of our which i locked at last week our 80% sustainable road share by 2030 so it's our decade of action here. the next 10 years and just thinking about how vital the streets base is to our goals. so much is about parking so it would be interesting to have a conversation about the services attempting to make access to a vehicle really seamless so it's a better option than car opioid because you can get a different car when you want to. it was just one of the most sophisticated examples i had seen of that wrap around mobility suite. i so wanted to bring that into the conversation because it just pertains so much to parking and our streets-based goals. >> our curbside management team recognizes that they're decreasingly in the car storage business and increasingly in the curbside management business. and so, they are eager to use san fran's control over subside in order to incentivize other players to collaborate. california is unfort in that because we are not able to integrate ride hail into an open a.p.i. platform. >> i have a question relate today that. some of the platforms are starting to show public transit and other options within their apps. it would be great to figure out whether or not there could be a greater collaboration because it would be interesting to know and make sure the data is correct for whatever they're putting in. how they're better helping people map a trip and if there's a partnership. if they're doing that, they are making an effort to be a compliment to public transit so maybe it's an end. i don't know. we've had those conversations. >> we give our information about schedule and real time arrival and departure information for all of our vehicles. any mobility provider can integrate public transit service services. because we can regulate scooters and other forms of micro mobility, we can require open apis for those services as well. so we're increasingly seeing, on transit app, all the scooters are showing up again on the mapping services and the services that we cannot integrate are ride hail. >> maybe there's a chance to work with them now that they're putting transit in. i'm not sure why but they're trying to partner but i don't know. >> >> yes. >> is there an attempt to reduce the speed which these scooters travel? >> yes, so awful them are capped at a -- is it 15 miles per hour? i believe it is. my staff are nodding at me yes. >> they condition exceed that. >> that's right. there's a speed governor in the device and also that speed is recorded. so they physically cannot, even on the downhill -- >> one of my greatest frustrations is we don't have jurisdictions over these car companies, uber, lyft and much to my chagrin legislature thwarts that ability of cities and counties to have jurisdiction. assembly member chair of the appropriations committee and the author of ab5 who has requested in a letter to the state puc to get the accident records of these automobile drivers so i'm hopeful she'll be successful and eight meemeet with her on a dift matter but i'll ask for a progress report. >> i'm thinking it sounds like maybe we can have a presentation of the future meeting to talk about the curb management side. it sounds like everyone has thought and we could invite some of the other companies who traditionally have not partnered with us to see if we can have dialogue. >> my staff is presenting on these topics. >> i just want to say i'm excited about the accessible scooter. that's awesome that we have that option and i'm glad oakland is doing it too and i hope that we're looking at our data as well as their data to kind of figure out how we can integrate more accessibility mobility options foray cros for across tt modes including bike share and car share. yay for the shooters. scooters. i need to open to public comment. anybody have public comment specifically on the director's report. i know it was long. there are a number of different items on it ranging from central subway and scooters to the embarcadero project but those items are now the time to comment. >> herbert winier and olivia and robin croak. those are the first three speakers. would you like to set a time limit. >> two minutes, please. >> two questions -- when are you going to keep the scooters off the sidewalk. it's constantly happening. and basically, i should not be responsible for reporting these defenses. you allowed them to be in the city. you have the responsibility to enforce the law keeping them off the sidewalks is a responsibility of mta and two, about market street. that mission street is going to be used for traffic. it will be terrific congestion on that street. it already is heavily by automobiles. with the congestion, bus also have a difficult time driving. it's going to be a slow ride on mission street and it's already a slow ride. so, these are the questions i'm posing. thank you. >> thank you, next speaker. please. >> olivia followed by robin crop and bob finebaum who is the last person to submit a speaker card on this topic. >> i'm here to comment on vision zero. i am a board member of walk sf and i want to eco comments on need to go go further and faster. i just wanted to highlight some things. in 1992, there were 3,326 new h.i.v. inspections in 201-8197. during that time, in san francisco, pedestrians have grown from 37% of traffic fatalities to 62% in 2019. the number of traffic fatalities in san francisco inched downward and now it's coming back up again. we continue to see the same fatalities and the same dangerous locations because of dangerous conditions. in 2004, the highest risk were the tenderloin and soma and in 2019 it was the tenderloin and soma. i want to highlight that we don't have to invent anything new to solve this. we're not talking about what the h.i.v. physicians and scientists did in inventing a new field of medicine. we are not talking about changing the paradigm of infectious disease. we're talking about painting lines on pavement, putting curbs into right places, getting rid of parking when it obstructs visibility, especially in school zones and other vulnerable places and not using our valuable street space as a subsidy to forms of transportation that make it less safe and less healthy. as i'm sure many of you have heard, norway celebrated an entire year without a single traffic, pedestrian or bike fatalities in their city. they don't know something we don't know. they don't have technology we don't have. they have used their streets space to prioritize human beings and to make it a safe place for people. a city that is not safe for pedestrians is not safe for people. i'm here to urge you to do the simple things we know how to do to make sure city safe for people. >> thank you. >> next speaker. >> robin crop followed by bob finebaum who is the last speaker on this topic. >> thank you for the interesting reports. so my first question i want to follow-up with what herb said about buses on mission street. i don't think they can get through because the traffic is going to mission street. you might want to consider with the 14 bus line with this change. take a big look at that and whether you want to keep it on mission or reroute it. also, i'd like to see a lot of, i guess, personnel out on the streets for this change because i think it will be tremendous congestion and confusion in the beginning so really help san francisco with this change with as many people out on the streets as you can to help direct traffic. my last comment is for disabled and fragile people, i have a question about that. usually people get dropped off and picked up and what happens to them and pick them up on market street and i'm wondering whether anybody can address that. thank you. >> thank you. >> bob, last speaker. >> hi, two quick comments with respect to jeff's report. number one, i had a conversation with a merchant's represent about the better market street. they were excited about it. as you know, they're going to be cars crossing market street and they prevent them from making a left and continuing on market street so i would hope the signage you put, especially with the crossings of market street will be explicit. that's number one. number two, your study of the scooters -- i hope you would broden that to electric bicycles as well and consider what is just a casual observation and seem to be much less likely to be riding on the sidewalks or violating most of the norms of conduct. these are the scooters. i hope your new regulations will solve that but perhaps you could look at that and compare two modes of transportation to see which might be more appropriate. thank you. >> next speaker. >> good afternoon, directors. i have two quick comments. they're both about bike lanes. >> give us your name. >> eye rowan. both about bike lanes as you expected and one is about the embarcadero quick build that is in development and it's said to go from i think mission to fulsome. it's the restaurant on the parking every night. it would be really good if we're going to do a quick build to tackle that extremely problematic spot as well. because that is, right now between sixth and eighth it's not a bike lane. it's not what our bike lanes are for. speaking of things are bike lanes are not for, if i can get the overhead, please -- this is a bit -- this is also what our bike lanes are not for. this is one our brand new protected bike lanes just south of 14th street. this is a regulated taxicab parking in it. i also could not find the photo of this but also this week there was a photo of an mta parking control officers vehicle that was parked in the new protected bike lane on valencia street so i hope that this agency can -- i realize this agency has somewhat limited power to prevent licensed taxicabs from parking but i hope it can prevent its on employees for warking in bike lanes built by the mta. >> thank you. >> two things, so director tomlin. i know that taxis are allowed to drive or sometimes be in the bike lane. i don't understand how that works. maybe someone can explain that -- i asked, i saw a taxi doing that and i admonished them and they said i couldn't be in the bike line and i was confused. >> good afternoon. so, license taxis regulated by the mta can pull over into bike lanes to pick up and drive off passengers. they're not allowed to drive in bike lanes or what was in the photo which only could have been done if the taxi had driven for a block in the green lane it will be harder. >> >> the enforcement and the things we're doing around better market street in advance, i've seen in bus shelters information that market street will be closed off as of january 29th and i was excited to see that inside the bus shelters that is one of the scrolling messages and that is anticipated and for what period of time we'll have a heightened level if you know. >> so we're -- our plan is to observe how much we get and the initial allocation of enforcement at the very beginning. so, the bulk of the staffing early on will be our parking control officers who will have to pull from parking enforcement as well as from the work that we do keeping our bike lanes clear. as you all know, all parts of the agency are significantly understaffed at the moment. everything from maintenance to our bus operators to our parking control officers. so allocating them is important challenge we face everyday. we'll be allocate allocating te early faces and ratcheting it down as we see additional compliance. we'll be in constant contact with san francisco police department which is responsible for enforcing the moving violations, the turning or driving down market street. >> so we don't have a plan with the police department right now that they're going to be doing early enforcement. >> there's coordination that is happening. there's a plan and again because both we and police department have to pull resource 0 somewhere else to implement that plan, the role out of that plan will be making decisions in the field every day to see how things are going. >> great. >> i guess the only other point is you talk about the monitoring of the 14r line that whole mission line and what sort of work we're doing behind the scenes to make sure that we've got that handled. >> yes. so internally we know about the importance of mission street. not only as a street for handling the 14 but also serving large garage and a lot of retail and hotel uses that face on mission street. mission street is a more complex street than market and there's a transit-only lane that many do not even know about because it's just faded white paint with limited observement. with how the peak tow away period in order to allow the street to maneuver and a fall gap position asking the question whether the 14 needs to be moved to market when there's additional transit capacity on to market temporarily so we. >> can you just issue whether people have curb access can market. paratransit does have access including our and the curbside pick up and drop off zones that exist on market street. today, it is not legal for somebody in a private vehicle with a disabled placard to do pick up and drop off at curbside park up and drop off zones. both today as well as january 29th. >> great. any other additional questions if we move on to the next item. >> just on the vision zero comment, just that stanford there was a nordic future mobility summit bringing lessons learned from scandinavian countries to the u.s. and there was a panel on vision zero and meghan attended. i had an opportunity to meet the gentleman who runs the vision zero program for the swedish transportation administration and i think he has gone back to sweden now but i just thought if we haven't already brought some of our nordic colleagues here to learn from the birthplace of vision zero, everything they've learned in their journey towards achieving. >> he was conducting a workshop at sfmta most of the morning today. >> great. >> great. >> so can we bring that to the board as a discussion at some point to learn from our nordic colleagues. >> maybe we should take a trip. >> ok. >> i think we're done with the director's report and we can move on to our next item. >> >> clerk: advisory council report. madam chair, i do not see the cac council members here so they'll be no report. move on to item 9. this is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board on matters that within the jurisdiction of the sfmta. we'll start with joel and followed by robin crop and bob finebaum are our first three speakers. >> i'm crossing guard at 19th and juno and a member of the bargaining committee for seiu. during our negotiations, the city had a sign that said safe and clean streets. they're one of the highest priorities of the mayor and we agree wholeheartedly. we believe the crossing guards are an under used asset that can help with this and wore hoping we can get a 20-hour week program for the guards not only it would allow us to help protect people in the middle of the day when we're not protecting the schools but it would give the crossing guards who currently work 12 hours a week more hours and it would help recruit and retain the guards, there was a time in the past when we couldn't recruit guards fast enough. it's been pointed out, there's a lot of good transportation-calming projects but they take years to complete and we're available almost immediately. in addition to protecting people we keep an eye out for the neighborhood and we can see would doesn't building and who might be trying to break into cars or do something wrong. back in 2018, a bunch of us visiting mayor breed when she was supervisor breed and all the other supervisors. we went around and everybody thought it was a great idea to have more hours for the guards. we got caught up in negotiations and no one proposed it and we missed the deadline. we're hoping we won't miss it this time because we think the guards are valuable, hopefully we can get some funding from vision zero traffic calming funds or the ride share tax traffic qualming or some other things and also we -- i know it's expensive but the question is how much is a life worth because life, everybody is priceless and i believe that a lot of people often, if there's an accident, even if it's a drivers fault, 100%, some lawyers troy to blame the city for some technicality because i think the city has deep pockets and it ends up costing the city a lot of money in time and possibly paying out settlements. >> robin crop, bob finebaum, hector. >> hi there, everyone. robin here. so i just want to be up here with an early comment for something is that i know will come up on the agenda. probably soon this year. we end the next 50 will have four forward seats and those extra two four two seats are facing from the entrance so that those of us who come onto the car needing and really need to catch the attention in anyone in a forward-facing seat to find out if they're able bodied and can relinquish their seat for someone that is disabled and it would be very difficult to do that if those seats are facing the other way. sometimes the driver actually helps me get the attention of someone down the card asking and if these people are facing the other way, they would be confused if they would address and. >> trying to get those cities are the opportunity for some of us to ride or not ride so it's very important to allow for some more access for those of us who need the forward seats to have those seats turned around and be facing forward for those who can give up their seats for us. that's all i have to say. thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> bob finebaum, hector cardenas. >> reflecting some of the comments that are passed and another of people are rather upset at the fact that a lot of folks get on the bus and to me, at least through one door, about 30% of the people are getting on didn't tag, pay th the fare. the mta should conduct a p.r. campaign that would emphasis we think not only would it be a good idea to do but it also would be a civic responsibility and that unique incident might get a few more bucks in the till for doing that. incidentally, i emphasize a p.r. campaign rather than a heavy-handed enforcement campaign because there are, as you probably know, some legitimate reasons why people do not tag. for example, a handicapped person getting on might not be able to get into a bag or purse to get out a ticket and tag. or someone who is a legitimate transfer to two lines that might be a reason. let's get a pr campaign. >> it's not to say and i want to emphasis that 30% of our riders don't use a clipper card because they're using a pass or they're using muni bubble or some other forms of payment so increasing increasingly, more and more of our riders are getting on pass programs and taking advantage and that is only available. just because someone is tagging in, it does not mean that they are a fair evader. thank you. >> the next public comment. >> hector followed by angelica and pj. >> good afternoon. i'm a resident and district 1 here in san francisco. also a union representative with sciu local 1021. i'm here to speak about the 8201 school crossing guard class series and as they prepare the budget and continues planning for achieving vision zero. the classification is currently kept as a non benefited temporary exempt position managed by the sfmta. the sfmta manages the 8214 parking control positions that the agency is planning to hire more of and who sometimes perform the post directing traffic as part of tha their jo. we believe the sfmta should not use the pcos as they generate more than twice their total salary, benefits and administrative overhead if they're out writing citations. sfmta is gearing up for an estimated 20 additional pco-ftes that would start this summer. the extra pcos would only work districting traffic or within a 7.5% premium per hour spent performing this traffic. i am not saying that school crossing guards can replace a pco for the function of traffic control, but it can be very valuable on the side of pedestrian crosswalk safety and share information to the pedestrians that need to go out. i believe that this is a way in which sfmta won't lose any citation revenue and strengthening its vision zero. many school crossing guards are ready to work now and there's no need to go through a long, hiring and training process. make the 8201 school crossing guard part of the traffic safety plan for offering an actual job in the sfmta. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> pj. >> and those are the last two people who have turned in speaker cards. >> good afternoon, my name is angelica and i'm with the south of market community action network. in 2017, our members have made comments that the wages are going up in san francisco. those winds are shattered when the cost is going up like muni. heh a city wide survey where we collected 500 survey in filipino, spanish, chinese and english that informed us the public doesn't even know where to address issues of fare increase. service is a big complaint and three a financial burden to san francisco. the second survey we conducted more recently, which we collected over 800 surveys across the city, in four languages, has really shown the burden of increasing fares is something transit riders are very concerned about. any amount of increase put on them is a financial burden put on them. since your department is going through its budget recommendations, we discourage fair increase to transit riders and we would like to request a meeting with the sfmta director to discuss this issue further and i was wondering, for the meeting next week, if there's a public comment on the budget line item because we definitely would like to have the public to speak on this issue. thank you. >> i started riding the muni when it was 35 cents and still ride it to today. we started collecting post cards against fare increase because we know the working class is struggling to stay here in san francisco. with fare increase happening all the time, families will have more problem on their plates. a lot of the post cards are from areas with majority working class families. people can't afford another fair because $3 is expensive. any fare increase will be a big burden for low income and working class families. the only improvement we saw from 35 cents fare to $3 is the time arrival cater on the bus stops. and some of them don't even have any. the bus still runs late all the time. fare security always makes people nervous on the bus. we would like to have another public comment on january 28th hearing for the board to hear families that already can't afford the $3 fare and may not be able to ride muni if the fai fare increases. we would like to any department that is in charge of the fare increase so that we can talk about it as a community. a lot of cities are doing free san francisco and why not san francisco. >> >> good afternoon. i apologize for not being on top of my comment card game today. i have another photo for you if i could get the overhead again. let's see if it works this time. this leads you through the maze of ramps and takes you to the other side to bay shore boulevard. there's a sign that went up there that says the pathway will be closed from the 23rd of january, which is thursday, until june 30th. so about five months and there has been no word yet about what the -- what a safety tore would this be. cesar chavez is not safe if you've been there it's terrifying. so, some of us have reached out to staff and are starting to get worried there's response eventually but we would really hope before this goes into exposure and in 48 hours and i will remind you it's legally required. secondly, on a completely different note, some of us at people protected are organizing a kickoff for our car free jfk campaign. we should be in new york and we're not there and for fun bike ride and a demonstration for getting cars out of our parks. thank you. >> thank you. >> any additional public comments? seeing none. mr. winier. are you coming up? >> two comments on the fare increases for muni. one, i believe that the fare increases are to be contingent on the cal quality of service. i believe they were supposed to be reliable and on time. i think 85% of the time. and frankly, i think we should be paid for riding muni and not the other way around. thank you. [laughter] >> any other additional public comments. seeing none. we're moving on to our consent calender now. >> these items are routine unless a member of the board, a member of the public wishes to sever an item and consider it separately. madam chair, i have received no request from either a member of the public or a member of the board. >> madam secretary, let me oblige you. 10.2 i'd like to remove and discuss. >> which one? >> 10.2. >> any other items on the consent cander that anyone from the public have an item they'd like to see pulled from consent. i'll take a motion. >> motion to approve. >> second. >> fall favor. aye. >> aye. >> passes unanimously and we'll move to item 10.2 to be heard. >> item 10.2 the transportation code division 2 and modify speed limits and improve speed limit modifications on various streets. >> colleagues, the concern i have on this item is the couplet at bush and pine street. you are all familiar with is a high volume set of streets. it's one way. as far as i know it's designed to large involves of traffic and from the avenues downtown and vice versa. it's congested in the peaks in the direction when the peak is pronounced. and, just on the face of it, and i would like to ask staff to provide detail on the proposal and reducing the speed limit on those roads and currently, i believe the lights on those two streets are synchronized so we don't have a because they teach you to travel at a speed. but bush and pine move such high volumes of traffic. i worry that all we're doing is just adding a couple minutes to people's trip. and i don't know what we're really and if there is from the staff, a report on the thinking behind it, i think i understand that the other streets that are part of the proposal but these two it seems to me, especially given their one-way nature and city wide importance, are a different kettle of fish. >> i know staff is looking at lowering speed limits and other areas maybe like in front of his house. >> you would love to lower that speed limit. >> so just a little context. the california vehicle code required us anywhere we post a speed limit we want to enforce with radar and we do a radar speed survey so our team has surveyed a large number of streets and many more listed in today's and found these are streets where the current 85th per sen tile speed is justifying leg the speed and decided been posted at 30 you can lower it to 25 based on the cities we've seen and those are both high injury networks and the goal of this change and most of our speed limit reduction around the city is not so much about the speed of traffic when the road is con justed during peak periods but to knockdown those and not making someone drive and knocking down the cities in excess of 40 and 50 miles an hour which are data points during our say have a and a reminder and these streets and that are tourist attractions and they take you through some congested and working within the very constraining to supplement what we've done to knockdown the high-end speeds. >> i'd like to point and residential and it's all houses along both streets. and those were streets that used to have one lane in each direction until in the 1930s, the sidewalks were narrow and in order to accommodate three lanes of one-way car traffic. our goal on streets like pine and bush is to continue to accommodate the car traffic but to do so in a speed that is closer to the design tolerance of the human body. the force of impact in the crash varies by half the mass of the objects involved times the square of their velocity. so, in safety science, the square of the velocity is the most important part of the equation. we can bring speeds down to 25, we can dramatically reduce the severity of injuries. if we brought speeds down to 14 or 12, we could eliminate fayal fatalities on pine and bush. >> we can declare it a job well done but i don't think that makes sense in trying to put together a balance policy that i think needs to be respectful and protective of all modes, not just the mode of the week. so, maybe i could ask a question. on the high injury network, these streets are miles long. i mean, so are you telling me the entire length of both streets is on the high injury network? >> well the methodology we use takes into account that crashes, even fatal crashes, and fatal and high injury crashes are infrequent. when we map out the the network we don't z. yo say they're on o- >> you have a map? >> on that map, are the lengths of the streets being proposed to be effected here, are they on that map? or is it smaller segments of them? >> pine and bush are on that map, as far as van ness i don't have the map. >> yes, that's right. >> well, look, i guess i'm still unconvinced and if we're not able to des tinge wis distinguig streets in the city maybe they all ought to have the same speed limit. the fact that we have different speed limits for different streets is an indication that those streets perform different functions and they're engineered differently. for example, one way streets, eliminate a lot of the turbulence that you have in two-way streets, right. left turn lanes and all the rest of it. so, it seems to me if we have a street functioning as designed, tom, could you tell us where the speed, where the actual speed is and what the prevailing speed is that makes you confident that you can reduce the speed limit. >> so, the 85th% on the street, we did divide it as two segmen segments. so we separate the street at van ness. on both sides of van ness avenue, for instance, pine street, the 85th per sen tile speed was 33 miles per hour in both segments in the before survey and we've modified the traffic signals. we've done engineering things here. we're asking you to make a legal clean up to something we've taken steps to fix. we retimed the signals. we were able to use signal signing to reduce that top speed from 33 to 32 miles per hour on both sides of van ness. at this point, that means that it would be legally appropriate and i gave this board has been asking us to take aggressive stance on speed limit for years and it is finally legally appropriate to move it from 30 to 25. we couldn't put a 25 miles per hour speed limit sign where vehicles moving 33 miles per hour under the vehicle code. >> is the practical way you would implement this change and retime the lights so that they're at 25 instead of 30? >> we retimed the lights in november. and again, our position is the posted speed limit and the signal progression shouldn't affect end-to-end running time because we're still giving a very generous window of time to the east-west traffic on these streets because of the role in the traffic network. >> to the extent the speed was out of whack with the limit, which is 30 presently, you've addressed that problem, haven't you, with the retiming of the signals? >> we've addressed the problem of moving the 85th per sen tile speed which is good news, we want to make sure that sfpd has the enforcement tools to address those 40 and 50 miles per hour speeders. >> that's a problem under either case. whether the speed limit is 25 or 30, they're breaking the law. >> if it's a problem in either case but to jeff's point, the te farther you get up the more danger you cause and the larger the gap between your speed and the posted speed limit, the greater the penalty. >> lower the speed and the less likely the is going to be fatal and involve serious injury. i'll still and i'll subside on this point. i'm still concerned that we seem to be blurring the distinction of all roads in the city and county of san francisco and the some roads are higher volume and should have higher speeds than others. and these two, if they don't make that cut, i don't know who does. >> director brinkman. >> thank you. i appreciate you bringing this up. i feel like i can speak for pine street. i lived on pine street for seven years in the residential stretch and can you talk about when we are successful in lowering those speed limits we know about the safety benefits that come along and the higher speed crashes are much more deadly to pedestrians than psyche lists. what about the noise? one of the things that hit us living on pine street was during rush hour we abandon the front of the flat. we were if the back. you couldn't even talk in the front room of our old victorian flat because the traffic noise going by was so loud. have we seen lowering the speed limits reduces the noise on those streets? >> >> we don't measure before and after on these streets. consistently the complaints that we get about streets like pine and bush and you can imagine any other number of streets in the city, is the pedestrian environment, the noise, the air pollution, the honking, of quality of life issues. we had far more complaints about that than we do about whether the traffic is moving at 30 or 32 miles per hour. >> so i know, living on pine street, the front of our buildings, our plants out front, disgusting with all the car soot on them and it was really that . i know leg the speeds won't but i feel like we owe it to not just the people biking and walking and the other drivers but we do owe it to them to what we would consider traffic streets and but people have choices on their streets and if we decide to make and it's going to be loud and it's going to be fast and it's going to be unpleasant to live on and i'm reminded of the apple yard study that showed the higher volume and speed and meant you had fewer connections not just across the street and my seven years on pine street, i knew everybody on my side of the block and one person on the other side of the block because this street was all in favor. any opposed. >> mayor breed had a group which i had the province of co-chairing with the esteemed experts add harrington who was our controller and ran the sfmta. it was a real endeavor to look specifically at our transit operations and it wasn't trying to as they say, boil the ocean but really focus on what do we need to make our system run well what do we need to do get out of the way and the short and long-term purposes. this group, which will go through with mr. harrington and as well as mr. stevenson in the end we'll talk about next steps. we'll talk about the members of that group but the group was primarily transportation experts but many of which who worked with transportation networks around the country and really could understand the challenges that we were facing and many of them are dealing with the exact same challenges that we have and so having their expert advise really digging down to the nitty gritty details that i don't know the right answers to and if you are not a transportation professional, you don't either was really invaluable so i want to thank who were here participating in this giving their time and flying in town or coming up from other places to be here and mr. harrington to come forward. who will give a presentation on our. >> people like muni in san francisco, people want muni to be well and they want to be able to rely on muni and so we owe them a reliable system to perform for them and the group got together because it was a chance to have a fresh look and is it wasn't probable and it. the staff were helpful and they wanted our assistance and they helped us between it all. without those two, it would not be possible to have this done at all. i wanted to hit a few of the highlights of the recommendations and they'll talk about some of the more details. the first area of reliability is staffing. you need to hire everybody. you will be hiring a third a quarter or a third of your staff probably from the next two years so the chance for cultural that's the good news. even at the fastest possible way of doing things it will take you another 18 months to get up to fully staff and part of this is also to set up expectations. in many cases, our recommendations are really just saying your staff has figured things out and we want to suppose port them in doing it. it's not rocket science and new ideas are coming in saying you worked on this and let's do this more and let's figure this out and part of the issue on staffing was that independence in this case may have resulted in isolation. and so when we gave at the mtc the authority to do things including hr i think everybody assumed that they're on their own and the city didn't pay much attention to them and they also didn't come to the city for assistance. one of the good things coming out of this report and out of this work is that the people in the city's h.r. department have been much more aware with the issues going on with muni and they'll be much more close collaboration. there shouldn't be things like muni being on its own trying to figure out how to get enough physicals to hire operators there's way the rest of the city can come together and it's a big part of what is coming out of this. the next big area of reliability, is systems in vehicles and a number of recommendations there. one is your automatic train control system mentioned earlier today. is an older system. first thing we recommend is you get a new contract supervisors have it for the next five or years and have them here on site to be able to problems with the sub sway system and the next system and you need to have the subway work better so the idea of having fewer trains is the only real option you have. i'm already noticing there's a lot more two-car trains and you will need to do that and you. >> the third is getting as many new vehicles as possible? getting rid of the fleet as soon as you possibly ka i can is a gt idea. i was stuck when the doors won't close. and so, getting the new system, the new vehicles at work is a wonderful thing to do and finally the congestion management strategy. you've been talking about congestion management and pedestrian safety and the working group also said we understand that you are looking at and that you will have to look at congestion management including pricing kinds of strategies and we're encouraging you to do that. we think it's one of the things -- one of the few choices we have left in terms of managing to make transit work in san francisco. all this stuff -- only happens if you communicate. and so, again, some general recommendations about communicating with the public and the people on your system and communicating better with the staff that work for the mta. in terms of major capital, i don't think we've figured out a really successful major transit capital project in the bay area in a while. and they're not better than that. so one of the recommendations is to take a look to see if there's a different way to do bus rapid transit extensions to the central subway and those things -- [please stand by] >> -- is that getting in the way of making muni as reliable and efficient as it can possibly be? your staff did not think that there was a problem. they did not say that they thought that other aspects of the m.t.a. were causing trouble helping muni be efficient. in fact, the somewhat-still-not-fully- realized vision would be helpful. so we're not there yet. there are still ways that your organization can work better internally to really focus on those things and prioritize those things, but we didn't have any recommendations to do things different. the only recommendation was that the city has a variety of people going to different transit organizations in the bay area, often without one cohesive message. so we thought when the mayor appoints somebody or you appoint somebody and they go to b.a.r.t. or the muni or somebody, they go with one message and they have staffing to help them do that. and here and in the future, it was to stablize. we all have needs for the city. we have a variety of lines that could be improved, so it's just saying go forward and prosper once you have it stablized. so those were the highlights. it was a great group, as gwyneth said. >> i want to thank you for your leadership on this, and it was really a different maker because you also see the picture -- a bigger picture of the city and also help us figure out and pull people together, so thank you for your leadership. i also wanted to thank peg and the controller's office for making this happen and being in charge of all of the documents. we have, if you're interested, a lot of documents from that time. i want to thank julie because it was her team that pulled together the charts and data. i know that i learned a tremendous amount about that process, and i think as an agency, we learned a lot more about what we needed to do. so i want to thank you, julie, for your work. i also want to mention c.a.t. and other people that were on that list in the deck because it makes a difference when people come together for the betterment. this public transit agency is for everybody. anyone who comes to san francisco, we want it to work for you. i take it every day, and i want it to work for me, and i want it to work for you. we heard from so many leaders from around the country that run transit agencies is we are on the right track. we are doing the right things. but the biggest problem is staff and aging infrastructure. that means that while we have a good action plan, we know our best days are ahead of us, but it doesn't mean we're not going to have bad days along the way because those problems are going to persist until we fix the aging infrastructure system. director torres, did you have a question? >> yes. i wanted to thank you for the work and time you put into this document. very ambitious. julie and staff, i want to thank you for your input. ed, thank you for coming out of retirement to provide your input and your experience into this effort. thank you, ed. >> thank you. julie? >> the work of the task force was very helpful because it allowed us to have a sounding board for what we're doing and to also identify where we had gaps. and what's becoming increasingly clear, and i think you'll hear this at the workshop, as well, is that we as an agency know how to succeed, and we have many examples of where we've been successful, where we've made investments in service, where we've been serviced properly, where we're making investments in congestion. but collectively, we're failing and that's because we have a lot more work to do to put those successes in place across the system, and that's very much what this working group allowed us to do is to think through how we can take what's working at a smaller scale and scale it up to the whole agency. so the reason we wanted to give this presentation today and the reason why i'm going to talk a little bit later about service increases, why we talked in november about the operator shortages and the supervision is because we're taking all the recommendations from the working group and building them into our budget request. we're also taking steps for things that don't necessarily require more resources but require analysis to make sure that we follow up on them over the next six to 12 months. i think the most important thing that we're going to be doing out of this is going through each of our categories of vacancies and identifying a hiring strategy. so in some cases, it's simply been not having enough h.r. resources. that's something you'll hear. we have one analyst working on 65 positions at any given time, wi which is certainly not best practice. but we have systems where we could put all the h.r. systems in the world, but we haven't established a successful pipeline. or we have the ability to create a position so we're not competing with the city, but we haven't done so. i think this is going to be the hardest and most meaningful work ahead of us second only to the budget process which is really the hardest work for you all. but we've put this together what we think will be successful at a large scale which we'll put before you next week. i want to also echo all the thank yous because not only did i get tremendous effort and support, i got some space to think through and articulate what i've seen over recommendation. -- we're working closely with them. they are in the lead. they are currently expecting to take some recommendations to the board of supervisors either at the end of this year or early next year. >> okay. so that sounds like in 2021. >> that's right. and at the same time, there are other things that we can discuss at the budget workshop. so in addition to using price to balance supply and demand for mobility and a quarter line for driving, we can introduce other things. so we can introduce price at the trip end. so for a parking supply, we have partial control there. there are also other things we can do for management at trip end. there are other things we can do. we have the possibility of introducing some tools to price trips at a higher rate when they're making less efficient use of our limited street space. >> it all makes sense. second question was around this idea of sort of speaking with one voice at a region. i thought that was a really interesting recommendation and i've been briefed on this and decided to weigh-in. i wonder if that proposal or concept came up with this group and if you had any thoughts on that? >> we talked a little about that, but given that the focus was really on transit -- it was one of those things -- members were really talking about this issue. it wasn't something in this timeline that we could really drill down into. i think it's on this report because it's on the timeline and it's something that needs to happen, but for purposes of this working group, it would be hard -- especially since we didn't have all the members of all municipalities and agencies present, it would be hard to put something together. >> i would ask if you put up the laptop for a second. the recommendation is there. so the degree that we were able to come with specific recommendations to try to make that happen, the people who had been in some of these working groups and staffing things, had some ideas about how staffing could make some of these things come true, so you can see the effort that we put into it. >> okay. and just the last one is recommendation 5-c around implement -- this was just to really ramp up hiring, you know, and recruitment to implement short-term strategies in order to begin a new class every five weeks of 40 to 45 students. that seemed kind of ambitious, and i just wanted to hear staff about that. ambitious in terms of accurate -- >> yeah. it was very much the work of the committee that we move forward with the recommendation to increase the pace. as you all know in 2018, we only graduated 78 people. in 2019, we more than doubled that with 200, but 200 is a treading water number. in order to be able to fulfill all of our service needs and even contemplate a service increase, we need to graduate more than 500 people over the next 18 months. so we are on track to start our first five-week class at the end of february. and then, with the following class happening concurrently beginning at the end of march, we're going to have to get pretty creative for the first six months in terms of trainers because we're hiring a whole new group of trainers to help deliver that. but at that time, we're currently on pace, and i'll continue through my monthly updates to let the board know if we waiver from that in any way. >> thank you. >> i hope you know what an accomplishment this is, how quickly we are graduating people and how quickly the work is beginning. >> i just went to the graduation, and it was pretty amazing. >> okay. i'll open this up for public comment. you'll each have two minutes. >> hi. bob feinbaum. i was glad to hear ed harrington mention longer trains. that's really essential. and the way we feel longer trains can be achieved is through en route coupling. that is coupling shorter trains that go to the avenues at the portals, west portals and duboce into longer trains in the subway. this would allow our over taxed automatic train control system to function better. now, we think this is imminently achievable, especially with the new siemens l.r.v.s. and i would suggest that you add this recommendation to the report, and if you don't, you add this as a priority and perhaps even a budget priority to include the tests that are necessary to assure the trains can be coupled. now, i know the m.t.a. and that julie is trying to run shuttle trains between embarcadero and west portal, and those are three-car trains. i'm not clear why they aren't four-car trains, but be that as it may, that is not a substitute, in our opinion, for being able to couple at the portals, which would give us a lot more flexibility and also a lot better service to the riders. i would hope that you could at least do a pilot program with the new siemens to see how that can be achieved and do that this year. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> cat carter, herbert wiener, robin crup. >> good afternoon, directors. i want to repeat thank yous to everybody that participated and helped and made the task force such a success. we really appreciated being included in it and being able to participate in it, and i did learn a lot. i think everybody learned a lot, and we really appreciate the effort of julie kirschbaum and her staff. one way i feel that riders are paying and continue to pay a high price for many years of muni sort of sweeping issues under the right laug, compromi transit issues, compromising wherever, and it's now become aware of all the real problems, and what it really takes to ramp up the staffing and all that, that we know that we can all come together and work on those solutions. so we're really encouraged by this new area of greater transparen transparency with new leadership at muni. there are internal challenges, but there are many things that muni can't fix on its own, and it needs the whole city family and city leadership to get behind it, whether it's the hiring and the training and, you know, those sorts of -- the procurement issues, and also the broad-based political argument that we need across all the city. the staffing, it looks promising, and for congestion management, i just want to go back to curb management, signal priority, street priority and all those things that help us move. i wish that i could stay for the next agenda item. it looks really exciting, but thank you for all of this. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> herbert wiener, followed by robin crup. >> first of all, i think this could have all been prevented, and it's all a matter of priority. i think bicycle lanes got greater priority than muni staffing, and it resulted in an explosion. i think muni has the funds to implement the recommendations. also, there's been poor communications in planning. when the project managers go to communities, it's basically a dog-and-pony show, and decisions are made in advance. very little changes are made, and the people who are affected should be represented on task forces. organizations and individuals are left out, so what you have is the people who are affected are not really represented. and also, i think decisions should be made at meeting and not beforehand. in other words, i think contractors have been lined up in advance for projects, and basically, board meetings are where you make the decisions and not in advance of that. and also, your aged and disabled should be the baseline of planning because in any civilized society, it's how we treat the aged and disabled, and they have been given low priority. and staff will always say no one wants better service than we do. unfortunately, it's on their terms and not that of the public. the public is what really counts, and that is why you are in deep linguini right now because there was an explosion with a breakdown of service. the executive director is gone, and here you are. >> robin crup, who's the last person to turn in a speaker card on this matter. >> hello, everyone. first of all, thank you for having had this muni reliable working group process. i think it'll be really good for the city. i thank everybody who participated. i just hope you can implement everything that people are talking about. so keep a positive going forward attitude on this. so i want to add one thing. herb just mentioned about aged and disabled. i cannot ride half the buses, and this is a really important issue for those of us who are disabled. can't standup, can't sit sw sideways, and i can't step up where all those other seats are. it's really depressing. i'm standing, not sure i'm even able to get on the bus. like, half of them don't have forward seats in their front area, and the other half do. i think all buses should have two to five, and it's not hard. i think you just put two seats in the back toward the front area, and get those of us who need access to transfer seats can. this is part of reliability for muni service for me as a disabled person, and i don't think i should be put in a position of not being able to ride half the time. and then, sometimes, i shouldn't have to figure out if i'm trying to get somewhere, i'm sitting in a sideways seat. i can't do that. it's really uncomfortable, and i can't hurt. it would be under the vehicle category of making it reliable for those of us who have needs to sit in a forward seat, to add two to five in all buses so there's an option. so thank you -- but very good process. thank you. >> gerald kaufman, last person to turn in a speaker card. >> my name is jerry kaufman. i'm representing the bay area transportation working group today. if your automobile is exhibiting serious mechanical problems, one approach would be to simply give it a good washing and polish job, but it doesn't work too well. now i want to say right here that i heard some very good suggestions coming out of ed harrington's presentation. there's some good ideas in there, absolutely. it's a start. but the m.t.a. by some accounts is a 6,000-person operation and subject to constant public scrutiny. so switching top managers and initiating top-down studies doesn't really dig into that 6,000-person organization. now, the bay area transportation group has, for a long time, been advocating an inside management audit independent of anything. on the east coast, many big private corporations do that, and some big public agencies, at least on the east coast, also do that. it's not unheard of. so we would recommend that -- let me say this. one last thing. if everybody in this room agreed with that -- they don't, but let's say they did, it would still take three to five years to implement it, and that is symptomatic of the problem. thank you. >> thank you. any other public comments? seeing none, public comment is closed. any items before we close out this item and move onto our next one? okay. we'll move onto our next item. >> item 12, presentation regarding transit service. >> we welcome julie back again. >> good afternoon again. this is our monthly performance update where we -- we talk about both where we are with critical metrics, how we're doing with implementing the various 90-day plans which we're using to carve out big problems into more manageable pieces. i also wanted to add onto this presentation a deeper dive than we typically take into the services and the need for increased services as i think it'll help next week's discussion. during this 90-day plan, we are focusing in five areas. these initiatives continue to be identified by me based on feedback that we're getting from the public, from this board, as well as staff. but then, i look to my staff to identify the actions that they're going to carry out to help us move forward on these strategic initiatives. and while you guys have ample opportunity to hear from me, i'm really here only because of the hard work of the transit group and across the agency that is working to deliver excellent muni service. our initiatives this 90-day period which wraps up at the end of this month were safety, service reliability, well maintenance. we added one that we were hearing from our local partners, especially around local 250-a is acting more quickly on employee-generated ideas. and the last one is the subway performance where rather than identifying strategic actions for this 90 days, we're carving out both this 90-day plan and the next to carve out a two-year subway plan that we can really articulate all of the interrelated work that we're doing to bring near-term improvements to the subway. as you know from our last meeting, we have no more important capital project for the transit system in my opinion than the new train control system, but that's a promise that's going to take five to seven years to deliver, to making sure we understand all of the steps under our control to deliver excellent service in the near term is critical. so we've started that process in this 90-day plan, and we will continue it in the next cycle so by may, we can bring you a comprehensive approach that you can hold us accountable for to deliver subway improvements. this has been a very successful 90-day plan. we continue, even as we lower our metric for preventible collisions to see a reduction in preventible collisions. that is absolutely a partnership with our safety division as well as sustainable streets. we've started, over the last 18 months, really focusing on things we have the most control over, things like hitting fixed objects, yard collisions. we did a very comprehensive sideswipe campaign. one thing that we're doing that i'm excited about is updating the bus rule book, which is almost 20 years old at this point and making sure that it reflects our current best practices and also to give staff greater clarity as they operate in our system. we also were able to make some good progress on terminal departures. there's a lot of things that happen in our system once we're out in the road way, so what we really try to communicate to the operators and to the staff managing the operators is that the terminal and leaving the yard are our biggest control points. and if we can leave those on time, we're going to deliver better service throughout the day. we did see a decline in our headway adherence, so for our rapid routes, how long are we waiting? if you're waiting for a rapid bus, they run every six or seven minutes, so you shouldn't be waiting more than 10 or 11 minutes. we have seen a decrease in our service and that's because we have been shifting some of our rapid routes to some of our equity routes. but we have seen -- finally, we're really excited to see an uptick in our service delivery. we also saw relatively few major delays and we're seeing more and more of our trains out in the system every day. the initiative that i talked about with the employee engagement, this is just one example where our schedules group has put up in our operator portal, which is a special website that just our operators have access to, where operators can put in feedback about our schedules. we often hear, there's not enough running time, but having a place where operators can go and get feedback and then our schedulers can ask follow up questions about that, is it multiple times a day? do we need to add time? do we need to add time at that signal? i think our scheduling manager, susanna lopez for looking into this, but also that she is looking into every single operator that needs feedback. she's not looking at this narrowly, so if this operator uses this website to voice something other than a safety concern, she doesn't say oh, this is just for safety initiatives. that's the kind of atmosphere we're trying to foster across the division. we will continue to pursue everything in our toolkit to continue this trajectory. service delivery is up. we are currently not training new operators, which i think is going to give us a small hit this spring because we're using drivers to implement new modes. we will be starting the five-week classes at the end of february, and i'm excited to see that come to fruition. we -- we did have three major delays, although we've been fortunate not to have more. we talked a little bit earlier this afternoon about the subway flooding. we also had two vehicle delays. the vehicle delays, particularly when they happen in the subway, are so impactful to our service, so i'll talk in a little while about some of the successes we're seeing with l.r.v.-4. we're also in the process of some very strategic investments in the brada fleet. where we are seeing trends, we are making investments to try to keep that fleet as strong as we can for the duration. i'm not sure if this photo does it justice. it came off of a video, which essentially showed a waterfall straight into church station which has been a result of conditions on the surface. but it also really required us to work much more closely with the p.u.c. and with public works in order to make sure that we're prepared for what is going to be increasingly difficult weather conditions. in this last storm last week, for example, we activated our storm watch which included going out the night before with the p.u.c. and making sure that our key drains that impact subway flooding not just at church but also at vanness and castro which are also very vulnerable were cleared, but then also having somebody on-site so if a big piece of card board or something that wouldn't have been anticipated the night before blows into the drain, we're covered. we did upgrade the pump set at church station, but we're also looking to see what work we can do with public works to siphon some of the water that comes towards church station off sooner so that it doesn't all hit the intersection. some very large number of catchment drains all end in that kind of naturally low lying area, so that is the work that we have before us. i'm also incredibly excited that we are going to be implementing or second extended -- implementing our second extended maintenance window. it's to make sure we're taking care of these long-term items that have created impacts to our peak period customers. so while we're asking -- what we get in exchange is a much healthier system 24 hours a day for the rest of the year. our track maintenance signal, overheadlines, they will all be doing work. our custodial services are also taking time to deep clean the stations. this has now become a quarterly effort, so in addition to daily cleaning, whenever we have an extend extended maintenance, we will be deep cleaning the stations. both director tomlin and i are going to be going down, we're really excited to see the work. we're working with deanna and erica to get some footage because we want to be able to share with the public some of these tasks which are a little bit more harder to describe but are impactful to the public. now that we have one of these shutdowns under our belts, we will be doing more to document the efforts in real-time. one metric that we continue to not make the progress that i'd like is in the subway, where we saw a particular gradual tick up in the portal, in the westbound direction. we have piloted some changes, and we will be coming back to you to report how those are working. we find those resources are sensitive to how much management oversight we're giving, and that's something that we're going to continue to work at, but if we can't wk to do.ly get trains out of we still have about six vehicles that are not in service because their wheels have gotten too flat, and it takes about a month now that we have wheel sets to get those wheels replaced. we also have three weeks that we haven't purchased yet. one has been at m.t.a. but we've used it heavily for parts to keep other vehicles in service. and two, our back at siemens is being rebuilt. the first one should come back in february, and our second will come back in march. so we should be back, although not to the 48 i had hoped at the end of this month. i think we're starting to see the reliability promise of these vehicles. they are almost double the performancefur breda fleet. so for the last two months in a row, we've hit about 10,000 miles between breakdowns, and we're moving toward our ambitious target of 25,000 miles between breakdowns. we've been able to reach that in close partnership with siemens because we are tracking all of the key failures on the system. the biggest issue being the hydraulic power unit that we've talked about here, but i just wanted to talk about it in scale. we have been tracking all breakdowns since august 2018. even the cameras, which were getting water intrusion, we had eight instances. we had 58 instances of that brake locking up. i'm really pleased to report that since we've implemented software changes, we haven't had one issue. so as we're solving these problems, we're having fewer and fewer breakdowns each month, which is how we're going to get to the performance that we expect. all of these issues are covered under warranty, so i did want to flag that siemens is covering the expense of addressing these problems. the ones that we're focusing on and are kind of the last pieces are some failures that we're having with the video system, which we're hopeful that a software issue will address as well as some of the door adjustments. so we're working with the manufacturer to identify kind of the -- what they would consider a golden door, the perfect door setting. we're going to operate that in service and then see if that is in fact the issue or if it's something more significant that the manufacturer needs to address. our most recent customer facing issue for the l.r.v.-4 was the shear pins. we had about a two-week period that we did not have full care operation and that's because we had two shear-pins break and affect service. we addressed this by replacing all of the shear-pins in the vehicles, and we will continue to do that until we have a solution. but i think more importantly, the -- siemens has worked with a data analyst expert, and they have equipped two vehicles with sensors. and this month, they are driving the entire system, both revenue, as well as in the yards, going through every turn that weing to address those hu, and then, the question becomes do we need more service, where do we need more service and kind of what is driving that demand? i look at kind of three lenses that i wanted to share with you today. the first is through an equity lens. equity policy in 14 thani contuese al o our for opportuns where we can make the service better for the people who rely on it the most. the second -- and this has in manyases some overlap with our equity needs, but we are facing a lot of crowding on our system, particularly on our heaviest ridership routes, like the 38 geary, the 1 california. we also as an agency have laid out some very ambitious policy goals. for example, getting to an 80% mode share absolutely cannot happen at our current service levels nor could we accommodate the growth that we are expecting as a region. and then, the last thing, because it's related, is if we don't address congestion through policy mechanisms or through capital programs, the reality is we're paying for that congestion by having to add more service just to deliver the frequencies that we have today. the m.t.a. board, we will be bringing you an equity policy or an equity report in march. it is required that you adopt it before the april budget action, and it very much considers where we need more service and where strategic capital investments can really help our communities of concern. we also, i think, as an agency, have some of the most progressive fare policies in the country and that is also very much grounded in our equity work. but despite that, there are still some very clear gaps that we're going to be talking about, both today as well as at the board workshop. and to that end, the first thing i want to point out is that when we talk to riders who come from our equity neighborhoods, there's a lot of common themes. so things that we're hearing across the city, we're also very much hearing in those neighborhoods. things like long and unpredictable wait times, having to go through an unreliable subway, lack of customer updates. but when transit is one of your only options, those citywide issues become more acute. we also hear some more specific targeted feedback, particularly about crowding along school lines and in peak periods. particularly in the bayview, we're hearing that reliability is compounded because you're often expected to transfer. so a challenge that you have with one infrequent route because multiplied because you have to take more than one route to get to where you're going. we also know that without intervention that these trends get worse. this is a map from 2050 of increasing travel times, and what we see is that there's a pretty significant overlap in where we're seeing increase in travel time and our equity neighborhoods. shifting to the other piece of the framework, crowding. this here is a graph of our crowding. we've continued to see crowding increase, particularly on our rapid network, which in the peak period, which this happen is showing, in excess of 20% of our trips are in uncomfortable conditions. that doesn't necessarily mean we're experiencing passups, but in the peak of the peak, that does mean that people have to wait, and certainly, people who use wheelchairs are going to have increase in their difficult time boarding in these peak periods. the growth that we've seen over the last decade is significant. in some cases, it's aligned with the growth in the city. in other cases, it's outpaced it. for example, we're seeing a densefication of downtown businesses. just because more people are working in smaller spaces are generating more trips, and one of the downsides of that when we don't have the transit infrastructure that we need is that we are seeing an increase in congestion. a lot of this congestion is caused by t.n.c.s, but it's also caused by just an increase in underlying growth. so as we consider all of these factors for service expansion priorities, you know, we look to close equity gaps, we look to address crowding, we think there's particularly some targeted opportunities to address weekend crowd, which is only happening on a handful of routes but something that if people are taking the time to ride in -- on the weekends, we really want to encourage and grow. preparing for areas that are expecting future growth, and i also want to say that any investment that we make in service really also will need a complimentary investment in transit priority. we want to make sure that where we're putting service, we're doing it efficienty aly and no just throwing money at a problem. our draft recommendations at this time, which we will react more thoroughly to at the board workshop. first and foremost in this budget cycle, we will be rolling out central subway. we are also recommending a new route which will provide a faster route from the bayview to downtown. that's a need coming out of the bayview community study which you'll hear about next month. a quicker, more reliable trip on the 29, finally getting the 22 fillmore into mission bay is something we will see over the next two-year budget cycle, as well as a very small route -- the 56 rutland is currently our only route which is operated by a single bus which makes it very vulnerable to any problems. but it also means if we want to extend it three blocks to the 29, we can't do it. we think the investment will make a big impact on that route because it will allow us to make new connections and run more frequently. we will not be adding new services until we are able to fulfill the service we have. it is going to be a difficult thing to communicate i think publicly. there's a lot of people that are in crowded buses today who don't have the connections today that one investment's faster, but i would urge us to make sure that we really can deliver what we have well before we try to grow. for the central subway, we are going to take this next six to nine months to revisit the service plan. the service plan for central subway was developed a decade ago. it calls for about half the service to turn in mission bay and the other half to go down to the bayview. we see a need to review that through both how the area has grown as well as through an equity lenses. i think we will probably recommend more service going all the way down to the bayview. we also want to make sure that we're looking at what other concurrent improvements we want to make to the muni metro subway. we've talked a lot about this board at having fewer trains enter the subway, and as we enter the subway, we feel this is an opportunity to look at the rail system and its entirety, so we'll be bringing that back to you. but at the end of the day, we're going to have the subway open, we're going do have a strong connection from the mission and bay to downtown and chinatown, which we're incredibly excited for. the 29 sunset, you all first heard about it when you had an opportunity to hear from those really amazing lowell students, and they were one of several groups that were really identifi identifying an opportunity to roll out our most successful brand to an area that we hadn't really thought of as need be rapid service. the 29 sunset goes through dozens of schools. it's our longest route. it also connects two very large universities, and so we've already started a community process to figure out what are the most important stops, what are the best hours of service, and we'll be going through that process over the next year provided that as part of the budget process we identify more resources to deliver a 29 increase. similarly, we're recommending a new connection from the bayview to the downtown. we are taking our cue from the bayview transportation plan which identified quicker connections to downtown as well as fewer delays on third street as high priorities. we're going to kick off a community process to make sure that we really are making the most successful connections that the community wants, but we have put a place holder in our community direction to deliver new direct service. and then, as i -- i conclude, i -- you know, i just want to flag that our equity strategy has been one of our most successful initiatives in terms of getting service where people need it the most. just recently, we've implemented improvements on the 27 bryant, we've added some service on the 29, although more is needed. we've added more late night service to the t-line with the conjunction of the opening of chase center. this is part of our overall implementation strategy. what we plan to be implementing very soon is shifting to larger buses, the 30 stockton, as well as larger buses on the 7 haight and continuing to track the equity metrics to make sure that where we need to make adjustments and service reliability and we're able to do so. thank you. >> thank you for that report. and i want to ask you, have you done this presentation or do you plan to do this presentation with the c.a.c.? the community advisory board? i think particularly the equity stuff, i would love for us to bring that to the group. and i hope that prior to when we get to the budget process that we actually vet in the communities of concern kind of what our action plan is, what our limitations are and even get ideas, if there are -- with competing for priorities, what is actually the focus. i know we had a bunch of groups that were engaged on the strategy initially, and i really just want to make sure that we are doing the outreach to let people know because we're saying -- we're hearing their feedback and we're taking it and making decisions, but we also want them to feel like those were decisions that they were part of or wanted to be part of since we have limited resources and we do need to make choices there. so i would say that about the equity strategies. so if we can reach out to those groups, bring it to the c.a.c. and make sure we really vet kind of these priorities so we have a sense of shared agreement on those priorities knowing our limitations. >> yeah. i would just add, that's a really good point. i would just add something similar, like, and just add something similar, maybe the human rights commission could help us on that. like, they saw the previous version of this, and they have a draft proposal in place, but we definitely heard from them on this, and it's huge. >> and there's a new office of racial equity that's just been established and it would be good to give them the report and tell them where we are. we're obviously the one agency that kind of connects to it all in terms of these issues, so i think if we can be out front, working with that office, i think that would be critical. i think people would need to know that sometim know, sometimes examples of key areas that we're talking about wasn't a function of the core train that we bought for us, but it's something about the other trains. it's not that siemens sent us faulty trains. >> yeah. for example, the camera system. we required siemens to install a specific camera system, and the issues that we're having is a software integration issue between the core siemens train and the system we currently inspect. another system would be the door system. the door is not made by siemens. that's a subcontractor, but we still hold siemens accountable to delivering a successful door. the core vehicle is a siemens vehicle, and it is incredibly reliable. that said, i think siemens has been challenged to build a door that works in our operating environment. i think they did underestimate what it was going to take to go through our tight turns, go up the church street hill, navigate our grades and our grade changes, and those -- those issues are incredibly important to our system. that being said, they are committed and showing up every day with engineers and with quality control people to work through these problems with us. we are yet to have a conversation, for example, with attorneys. all of our work so far has been about tackling hard design challenges, and san francisco is very much a difficult design environment. >> great. any other questions from directors before we open it up -- director eaken? >> great observations and comments. i love the new portal for operators. and i would just love if there are great examples of such -- that seems like a great example of government innovation in action. i hope you can help tell what aren't always great stories about m.t.a. in the media, and if you can help tell these stories of great innovations and how they're being implemented, i think that's a great news story. secondly, thank you for confirming my suspicion that we can't hit the 80% sustainable goal on our mode sharing system. and i just wanted to confirm, can we actually track that to the increased operator availability coming out of some of these recent graduating classes or how do you understand that number? >> absolutely. there's a direct correlation to the large classes we've been graduating, and that recovery. >> great. thank you. >> we'll open it up for public comment. we'll start with herbert wiener and robin crup, two people that have turned in speaker cards on this matter. mr. wiener? >> herbert wiener speaking of the january statistic. on january 9 at 5:30, i was at the metro station, and waiting for an el taraval. the first el taraval was broken-down and was taken out of service. several coaches were so crowded i couldn't stand on them. i'm 80 years of age. finally, i took a coach to west portal and then transferred to the l. by the time i got to my meeting -- and by the way, it was an m.t.a. meeting on el taraval modifications, it was close to 7:00. it's not 7:00. i was so hopping mad, i felt like writing the mayor, writing mr. tomlin, writing the board. fortunately, i calmed down. can you imagine? other lines are not accessible. these 27 line, no, those modifications are not good. there's less bus stops, longer walking distance, same amount of coaches, no. and the -- 2 clement, no service beyond park presidio. and years ago, decades ago, the transportation map covered most of san francisco. now it has been shriveled thanks to muni forward. so that's the state of affairs of public transportation. >> robin crup, the last person to turn in a speaker card. >> so i've just been doing a little creative thinking here. we are fortunate to be at this meeting, hearing what's going on, but basically, the public isn't. so i'm just wondering if m.t.a. is thinking about more about communicating with the public about what the plans are. for example, we got to hear about operator shortages are or when you're planning to do new classes. [please stand by]. >> there is a free clipper® card for seniors and disabled. what about the idea of a discount clipper® card for those who apply for it. this can be for students or anybody who feels they can't afford the fare increase. many people don't care, they have lots of money. but for those who do care, i'm wondering if you can consider the idea of a free clipper® ca card. that is my second idea. thank you. >> we do have a lifeline pass for someone who meets certain income criteria, as well as free transit for seniors and disabled. we'll also be talking about some funding policies at our fare workshop next week. >> next week. >> and in addition to that, i want to say that we have a vacancy both for our communications director position as well as strategic coms lead. the vacancy for communications director is in the process of being filled. i'm so incredibly excited because we have great applicants, and once we have that filled, we can fill the strategic coms role, as well. [please stand by] >> when we make these plans we take feedback from everybody and nobody pays attention until five years from now and we are developing an arbitrary yard and they are protesting. i want to make a note that sometimes unsexy looking things on the agenda are really important groundwork to where we get to in the end if people pay attention. >> that was an amazing introduction. thank you very much. [laughter]. >> i and the building progress program manager for the agency and i am going to talk about our 1.4 billion-dollar progress program. there we go. first, just to introduce you to the overall topic, most members of the public don't understand the extensive campus we have across san francisco. here you will see 20 plus extensive operational facilities across san francisco. does -- this does not include the operator restrooms we have across san francisco to maintain service day today. it is nine major yards, that is more than any other city department has in san francisco. we have 2.5 million square feet of building in san francisco that serves all 6200 of our employees. not only is it an important baseline for our service, this is where our our service is generated and goes that every day, but it is important for employees and important way for us to show the investment in them and help them be successful in the job that they do day today. in 2015, we did a full organizational assessment on how we manage this function within the m.t.a. with the facility's framework. it is a massive plan. it is on our website. that became official in the building progress program which is the implantation of those recommendations and intricate -- in addition we did an organizational assessment and we centralized all functions regarding the maintenance and delivery of capital products around our buildings in san francisco. the three core elements are to modernize our facilities, make sure their up-to-date, they are within a state of good repair so we can provide the service that san franciscans accept. we want to look at resiliency and their two parts of that. environmental resiliency across our facilities, but also looking at technology because our oldest yard in san francisco, potrero yard, is 100 years old. it has been updated over time, but we has to -- we have to expect the technology and the area of transportation will change. when we will construct these facilities, we want to future proof them as much as we can. of course, this interaction with the public with regard to our public facilities is very different than what people normally experience with the sfmta and the projects that we deliver so we absolutely want to make it critical in a goal that we are a good neighbor, meaning we will have a major construction project when we are changing things that we are involved with the community and having those discussions and we are listening to them and making should integrate what they need into the neighborhood. we will be there for a very long time. we break up the program into the different focus areas and there are staff leads across each of those within the organization. building progress, plan, engage, fund, fix, and deliver and i will cover a bit on each of those. the core element of the program that came out of the facility's framework was the large modernization program. this is nearly a billion dollars of work independently. what we did was we looked at the overall specific transit operation going down to 2035 based on the plan and we looked at how many vehicles could all of our yard fit, did we have, based on standards, did we have a number of bays required to maintain the vehicles we have? we looked at the technology and we determined that at a certain period of time, and i will show you this on the next slide, in 2025 we run out of room to store the number of vehicles that we expect to have in-service, including the spare ratios that we have. so there was a determination as to whether or not it was feasible for us to purchase a brand-new facility, or whether or not we could redesign the fixed facilities we have in san francisco to be able to meet the capacity that we expect transit service to require. the modernization program assumes we will take the 4 acres available at many metro east and it will be built into a temporary trolley coach yard to allow us to swing the suite, reconstruct potrero, presidio, and kirkland. we lay out the schedule of how that would work. but what is very important what we often communicate to the public is that unlike a lot of other projects of the sfmta, we have a bookends on both sides meaning if we do not complete these projects, we cannot meet our transportation operational commitments. usually we have the discussions, we have our process, but in this case we were upfront to the public that the 2025 date was critical and that we are able to meet it. our entire program is managed around meeting certain milestones and a critical path. we actually work to manage against risk in all areas and i will continue to discuss how we do that. so just to cover high level each of the projects, munimobile metro east is the first project estimated at $100 million. we have four vacant acres left -- left at the site. many metro east is our newest railyard. it was built for the central subway and in anticipation of expansion of the rail fleet. for now, we have the space we need at that sight to meet the needs of rail but these 4 acres are sitting unused. we will build a temperate trolley coach at this location. and we have worked with the transit division on the performance that would be needed to do that and the technology that we would require to have this vehicle stored there. one of the biggest challenges with storage of the water on the site and so here's an example of innovation. we looked at how we could deal with that. we designed a brand-new bus washer. in designing this bus washer, we designed when that could be used at any sfmta site, meaning it didn't matter if it was a 40- foot or 60-foot vehicle, a trolley coach, all vehicles would be able to used. it allows us to do a program and all of the yards. modernization project is an example of one of the graphics we made for outreach around potrero. we were clear up front that we intend on increasing service capacity in this location. we talked about the number of bays that would be necessary and we made it clear that it would be a closed three-story yard. we described the problem and the age of the facility. when we began this program, without people will be concerned about having a bus yard in the neighborhood in the first one we would have is not in my backyard please leave my neighborhood. employees or parking all over the street. why does in the m.t.a. by anything else? and when we were very clear about the need and the time to transportation services and the importance of these yards, in the first round of outreach two years ago, we were preparing our message on how to respond to that and generally the public was saying you need to rebuild these things. we have no resistance in that initial round of outreach or we floated increasing capacity. and i think clear communication, outreach, and messaging really helped us get through that. most recently on the potrero modernization project, we completed our application to the planning department for the use of the site. after nearly a year and a half of planning, we have an advisory group that we work with of many different people that help us develop our messaging for our logic -- larger public workshops we have developed the planned project, the building progress program i have to give credit to all the other departments that are with us including the department of public works and others. this really is a citywide effort and they are supporting us all along the way. we now have proposed a three story, modern bus yard that will also allow us to go to the transition to electric buses. we are planning joint development projects on top of that with an affordability target of 50%. as far as i have known, this will be the first three-story bus yard with joint housing development on planet earth. if you want innovation within san francisco, hopefully we will get it when we get this project. we are currently in the planning cup -- currently the planning phase. we anticipate this to be a joint development process. we are in the process of developing an rfq to see who is out there and who is interested in building this project with us the next site after potrero will be the presidio. we recently -- so i give credit to the team that is behind me. we got a grant from the state to begin the joint develop and process for the site. this will program, i will get to the funding, it's pageau, which is very unusual at the m.t.a. we work towards continuing on the critical path. we were successful getting this grant. we will go through the same outreach process we went through on potrero, and the planning process for the modernization of that sight. that work will be beginning this spring. and then of course, we cannot forget the barn, which is very of -- important to our operation across san francisco. this will be a very unique project for us. the full operations of the cable car service occur within the building. we are taking a different step in doing this and developing a full master plan for the project with the assumption that we have to work on the new system related to the service within the building first and then we will design the building and seismic improvements around that it will be very complicated, but we are starting that work this year, concurrently we will make improvements for the employees dealing with the pigeons and doing pigeon abatement, taking care of the hvac, and making a better working environment. we currently beginning that. and lastly, our sfd headquarters , if the public didn't know, our enforcement officer has been working out of the leased facility for least 20 years. please tell me if i am wrong. but we have made it a policy that our permanent operations should be in permanent sfmta facilities. it's because it is good business and in this city if we hit the end date on rent and we have had the situation happen and we have a permit operation that we cannot relocate, we can see up to 300% rent increases over the period of a lease. we really want to temporarily -- temporary services can be in lease facilities as needed. sometimes that happens with construction projects or when we bump up for certain situations. but certain units should have their own headquarters. we recently did a trade and we got another site which is the former animal care and control center. it's a perfect location because it is right -- it's right next to the large -- yard. so we will be working on that project within the next year getting it started to be the new headquarters. another thing we did as part of the framework was we took an absolute asset management approach to the entire program. when we did the facility framework, we did a physical walk-through condition assessment of every single sfmta owned and is sometimes longer term lease facilities that we have. we know when a door needs to be replaced, when hvac system needs to be replaced, with the condition of the lighting is, and we set the useful life of those things where we might have thought it lasted 15 years and we did a physical inspection and it turns out they only last five more. we now, with our maintenance dollars and our repair campaigns , have focused -- we -- you will see with the what the backlog is. this is backlog and repair of the building. we know we have costed it out to 2036 and we can tell you exactly what work needs to be done and which year. just estate of good repair of our yard smart -- - the modernization is $200 million. how employees absolutely appreciate when we get this work done. we are currently focusing on a couple very specific campaigns based on that condition assessment and the needs of our employees. here is an example where we did a full restroom refresh at the yard and we also did the break room. that facility is where we are continuing to make improvements, but that was recently done. the next site at our grignard, heating and air-conditioning is very important to our employees. would you want them to be comfortable. we are doing a massive campaign. you will see the crane out there we had a whole team out there to get the new system on top of the building where all of our operators come in. that is the annex building, the administrative building where the rooms are. that was recently completed. and then other work we are doing , pigeon abatement is forever. when we come up with a permanent solution, somebody please call me, but we are continuously working on pigeon abatement across all of the yard. they know how to eat the netting , they know how to do everything. they are the smartest creatures you can imagine. we continue to focus on it and get it done. we did a full roof campaign a year ago where we did do a patch we had leaking and a lot of our rooms. and a new trash compactor. we found out this is one of the biggest reasons that new compactors were needed. that was a suggestion that came directly from the employees. this gives you a quick summary of the current projects that we have in process. the major focus of our fixed program and our maintenance campaigns across all the yards, the break rooms and restrooms, working with enforcement, so while we are working on their new headquarters and their existing sites needs a lot of work. we have invested a million and a half dollars. when we extended the lease, we did about $700,000 to that particular sight and we made improvements of the location for the parking control officers vehicles are. getting rid of needles, adding new lighting for safety, and we wanted a small wash station. we took care of that and got that done as well. one of our biggest successes was getting the reconstruction project done. that was 102,000 square-foot warehouse for the sfmta. we got that project for the public. we got a 42 million-dollar project done in two and half years. from design, environmental appearance, to full construction we took the site and not only did we increase the capacity, you are seeing higher storage racks there. we made a fully resilient. we built a seismically sound brand-new overhead line facility for overhead lines. we moved another function and increased capacity. we did not add one more square-foot and now we have a brand-new facility for overhead lines that are supercritical and maintaining the system day today we got that done in two and a half years for $42 million. bancroft is where all of our streets are and we did a 50 million-dollar renovation of that building. that was recently completed. and the biggest rush for us was getting the second phase of the creak open and our newest best yard -- bus yard. we are still working through final closeout items there. we did get that location opened on time to keep this moving. on the major capital projects that we are working on, you can see the list here. there are a number of projects that will happening. so there is fire life safety. there is an ask later program where we are trying to get the last piece of that done. there is a high priority for us to move forward. and high priorities and lifts related to this service. the optimization of the facility , as an example, we are trying to do new lifts in a lot of the locations. we're just about to begin replacing the lifts at the presidio yard. that project is starting right now. a state of good repair and resiliency across all of the yards. as we are going in, we are trying to future proof these things. lastly is the fund part, like everybody else, there is a need. the general cost of the program, we take -- would keep a 10 year cash flow and the place where we update quarterly. we actually keep two metres with us so we have been doing new cost estimates about every six months where we have been updating and what we think it will cost. what you will see is the line to line multibillion-dollar cash flow, the big bump you see in fiscal year 23 is for potrero yard. you will see the growth with munimobile at metro. and then the next big bump is for the presidio yard, kirkland and we edge off. the yellow reflects the actual revenues that we have. you will see those are low. the redline is the gap and hundreds of millions of dollars in those years. this is where we were about a year ago. as i said, we have been working in partnership with the city, with our regional organizations, with the government on how we fund this because the assumption that we will just magically have $1.5 billion tomorrow to start the work on this one we know we need to do that is not possible. we don't have guarantees and a lot of these sources to get these projects done, but we do not have the time to wait. if we get the $10 million to move forward, we are moving forward. we are setting funds aside to get everything done and get everything is shovel ready as we can. the one area of success last year was the city and the board of supervisors -- board of supervisors and the mere's office agreed to advance the next bond. we need the case to have that advanced two years when our large cash flow would be necessary. the mayor's office, the board of supervisors, when they heard the case and we show them the numbers we're clear on what we were doing, they were perfectly happy to advance the obligation bond two years to help us do that. over the last budget cycle we were generally able to match the cash flow needs for these projects. we will attempt to do so in the next budget and one of the core elements would be attempting to fully fund muni east. the team has been assembled to begin the detailed design of that project. we have a gap of about $50 million for the construction we will continue to work on that throughout the process. potrero itself, despite all -- everything we are trying to get done, is still seeing 155 million-dollar gap for that project that we again, as you progress, we will attempt to close. in those areas, we're looking at all of our different funding sources. in the last capital budget, it was generally $396 million, which is where we started. the sources are shown there. the medium-term or the things we have been working on since you approved the last budget. we will devote more of the state of good repair funds to this program. spending it on facilities and buildings is a great way to use the money. both facilities recall were caught up specifically and that was in anticipation that we would likely need the funds from winning -- for [calling names] -- muni metro east. hopefully we will be able to devote to that. and then the tax recently passed again, as we look at all of our needs over the next year, we will take over and take a look at what we can use to help advance the element of the program. even in the high, we get to 995 and that still cost $1.4 billion this assumes that we can generate revenue off of our facilities and our properties in san francisco. we do generate a certain amount of revenue today. we are talking about doing, and at some point in the future, would like to have a discussion with the board by creating an increment program. currently all of the revenue we generate on our properties from our own leases we put into the operating budget but we would like to talk to about if we can work on getting more money that you would devote to this purpose to actually read the yard and reinvested in our facilities. we are also working with the city on as we develop sites, would the board of supervisors and the mayor's support keeping revenues generated from any development on those sites? at least for a temporary period back into this program to help fund the reconstruction of our yard? we are looking to generate a certain amount per year. the $75 million was me assuming we make it a tiger grant, it is irresponsible for me not to assume that we should not make a robust attempt to get some federal funds to do this. and lastly, and everybody has been talking about it, reauthorizing of the sales tax, the prop case sales tax. when that comes up, we can shift priorities amongst the expenditure plan for this particular program. facilities are already in the sales tax program. in the last cycle, revamped every dollar we had to get the work we are talking about to do all the planning work and the environmental work. we have been using the sales tax to get everything ready. the transportation authority has been supportive of us doing that , but asking us, okay, you are spinning 5 million on planning and design, how will you pay for construction? they will absolutely help us to try to get this program fully funded. we have used every tool we can to deliver this program. one thing those we did not do things concurrently -- or we do do things concurrently. we do not do them sequentially. i'm not a fan of waiting one after another. year ago, knowing we would have to do complex e.i.r. for two sites and we would need robust outreach, knowing we would need urban designers to support the work, especially that we do on outreach, we came forward with a series of contracts that went out for a competitive bid and were awarded by the m.t.a. board those contracts were approved with the cash that we had on hand on that particular day. the contracts were built knowing there would be additional tasks and as needed requests during the course of the program. we have taken all of that to the service commission and explained that to the board of supervisors into the mayor's office, but what we didn't want to do is get to the point where we need to do and e.i.r. and we knew we would get there, and then we had eight months to do a competitive solicitation and then get all the startups. so when we needed the technical service, we made sure to start the process to have that technical service months in advance of actually needing it. everything is tdap. we will be on schedule but now we have the cash resources to move forward with the increases to these contracts. in addition, the work on the yard has been robust and good and i think that has been to the benefit of the agency, with that took a lot of the financial resources on those contracts. now we have to get the full e.i.r. -- e.i.r. and outreach related to the entitlement process that we will go through with the planning department and also some work we will be doing that i talked about on presidio, that is to. >> thank you. are there any questions from directors? >> thank you. i'm afraid i can't help you with your measures, that i was hoping you would be able to help me and briefly on affordable housing. first question on the potrero project, is that a one off, the housing component, or was that the result of a systematic review of all of the assets and where joint development might be possible? >> we did do a systematic review of all the sights and sites and we feel that at least that potrero, presidio and kirkland, we definitely have joined develop into opportunities. we met with each of the supervisors in the districts from the completed the framework we let them know that those were recommendations and we let them know that the charter states that we should make every attempt to maximize the use of our own independent real estate. they know that and we went through the framework process. they were all supported. that is all public and out there with regards to site by site, we have a very scripted and well-designed process to work with communities and the members of the board of supervisors around the specific developments with the greg to potrero, we looked at numerous options. we looked at housing, we looked at process, we looked at mixed-use, we looked at many. that was part of the hatch contract to essentially look at the financials are in each of those developments in those opportunities. we also take into account the policy priorities that the city has with regard to the use of public spaces. we matched those things together in partnership with the planning department and the mayor's office of housing and we think, in this case, we have a good project for the potrero site that will help -- to some extent , we hope will offset the cost to build our own bus yard. it also meets the policy priority for the city. we think there are further opportunities are presidio that we can engage in and we are beginning the planning process to do that now. >> in terms of the presentation you made today, it was unclear to me whether that included the parking garages. >> we are working on the parking garages. there has always been a debate about looking at the parking garages. we did an analysis of the transit service parking garages is a bit of a different discussion and that as we close them down for reconstruction of whatever situation we have, we have to take into account the revenues that the agency will lose during that period. our first experiment of the project will be the garage. i'm hoping we will look at its mission after that because those are opportunity things for us. we will look at the parking garage. >> and they have a housing component? >> maybe you can talk about the services. people had bid and then we pulled it. maybe you can talk about that. >> that's right. >> i am the long-range asset development. we decided to pull it little less than a year ago in march o. the reason for that is basically we wanted to get more sponsors than we got. we have been working with the office of economic and workforce development to look at ways to potentially enhance the development of the site and working with planning in that regard. the parking garage -- they are not fallow pieces of property. it is generating about $2 million a year, which is revenue, but net income to the agency. we wanted to -- with responses we ultimately get. [indiscernible] in terms of the program for that site, we put out to the develop and community in late 2018 was a combination of a convention hotel as well as with affordable housing to address some of the concerns on public land. and we will -- we are still working with the planning department and oewd to tweak that program, although the program will probably largely be the same. we looking at potentially greater height on the site to increase the development capacity, perhaps a small office component as well. those are some of the variance that we are looking at. >> the economic analysis piece is important to find. i heard from those people that the numbers, because of various components, did not work out very well. i do think it is important. to your early point, this is a separate process from what we are discussing today with a modernization, which is more to do with the transit bus operations. >> i have to say, it struck me, if you are making a presentation , it sounded like a muni presentation, not an m.t.a. presentation. m.t.a. has all the other things as well as all those other parking assets. the last question i had, and then maybe i will make a proposal, is how are you coordinating? i believe the state passed along last year or the year before that required cities to do a more intensive look at their unused public lands or underused that work, i assume is going on citywide. is that work that you are coordinating with the city or are they doing it for you? >> we are absolutely coordinating with the city planning department. the public use for housing planner in the planning department is part of our team and they have been part of this process all along. as we have developed different options for the use of the property, which is why potrero is the best use was housing. not only did it pencil out with regard to our independent analysis, with the policy priority for city and it was something that the mission needed. it's what we heard back when we did outreach. it all worked together. i feel that we have a good process and team and citywide approach to each sight. with regard to the garages specifically, when we started the program, we were focused on how we would run out of room and these things are 100 years old and we are in big trouble, what we're working on the enforcement facilities and headquarters. we did put in a grab you a very similar global look at the garages. we have scoped out that work. we will continue to update you on that. >> i was going to bring this up at the workshop next week. but since this item is before us , maybe bringing it up in terms of the staff being able to think about the subject a little bit. i do think having a conference of look at the garages makes sense to complement the work you have done on the transit -- transit assets. obviously the revenue loss is a big issue. although i would think with the right kind of deal, with developers, the developer might be willing to carry that loss if they get a sweeter deal at the other end after the development is built. so just something for you to think about. i do think it is a way for us to kill more than one bird and given housing shortage that the city has and given the assets of the m.t.a. owns, we ought to be a big player in trying to help deal with the housing crisis. >> i agree with your statement. we're definitely working on those things. we will work on all of those things. we will report back and make a greater focus on it at the workshop. >> i wanted to bring something related to that. the notion of how we can pinpoint a certain portion of the revenue off of each project at least for the maintenance and upkeep of the facilities once we upgrade them. the issue we run into is the builder develops a shiny new thing, but then we don't allocate the money for maintaining those. it will be useful for us to talk about whether it's parking garages or these facilities we need to maintain it and fix things along the way that we retain the facility. to me, when you are doing a profit and loss statement for a building, the maintenance and the upkeep of that building has to be part of that. if it is not, then that is a mistake. we need to figure that out. >> absolutely. our biggest partner developing contracts around that very thought and what the director brought up is working with the port. the port is probably our most comparable example of, they can fairly -- barely deal with their capital costs and what they need to do, especially with the seawall and other lots. they have developed a very rigourous way of doing development, generating revenues that work towards their state of good repair to rebuild the infrastructure in addition to generating revenues for long-term operations. so we have been working with them on a lot of the tools that they implemented, essentially creating a special district and as develop it happened, they can set aside funds. we have been talking about community benefit districts on this particular sight. we have been working with the port to see how they set up that legislation and the process that they use and we are definitely looking to do that across all of the sites. >> other directors? >> i just want to agree at looking at the garages. i know this is something we have talked about in policy governance over the years. it is pretty in-depth. this report is such a great expansion of everything that we have talked about over the years the garages -- it always fascinates me that we have focused on that use. i would be hesitant to spend a lot of money on some of the garages when we are deemphasizing the role of private automobiles. it's actually in our downtown core. it gives us a really good opportunity to say what is the best and highest use of that? we're we are doing that caltrain too. we did a study of all of the available land we have available and what is being used for right now. this is great. i love to see all this work going on. and to complement you personally , you have done such a great job. i feel like, in my years in the board, every time i look up you are in a new and even more vibrant role with the agency and they really appreciate that. the entire real estate team is continuing to do such a great job on this. thank you. >> any other directors before we open it up to public comment? >> no member of the public has any speaker cards on this topic. >> there is no public comment so public comment is closed. this was just a discussion so we can move on to our final two item social be called together. item 14 and 15. no member of the public has indicated their interest in addressing you on these topics. >> great. we kind of went over these. one question, what is -- i know -- did we already do an r.f.p. for the housing portion? i'm not clear on where we are. >> the hatch contract was essentially to analyse the joint development option. we would have -- they rammed through different economic scenarios and they also have an urban designer that helps do the drawings and pretty pictures when we show them to the public. that is that contract. for the potrero, now that we have, i will use planning department terms, close to a stable project description, we now have greater surety that we can create -- we plan to do an rfq or r.f.p. for the developer for this project. that will take us about eight to 12 months. we have hired a company to essentially advise us through this process on what would be needed for that r.f.p. it will be extremely complicated we have oewd. that is all happening now. we are happy to give you an update. we are in the early development right now. >> i would be interested about knowing about this. if we are saying housing, if there's a percentage of affordability, and just to understand this. this will be -- this will make a difference. >> looping back to the notion of garages and doing some sort of analysis, could you do that as an amendment to one of these contracts? >> it's not impossible. >> the battle is a six-month semite take. >> when we put out two gramps, one for doing the garage study we did not get the parking garage one. we're amending the contract to assume that. we maybe will have enough room left to add to the the garage scope after this approval. the director of transportation might have enough authority after you set this new ceiling that we might be able to add it. >> thank you. >> any other additional questions? do i hear a motion? >> motion to approve both? >> second. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> motion carries. >> that concludes the business before you today. >> great. i will adjourn the meeting. 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