Potential but it needs bodies to react to the information. So what happened when we moved to the Transportation Management center and the new radio, we were running a call centre. An emergency or incident would come in the controllers would industrial on a piece of paper the key concern, they would dispatch somebody to respond to it. Our goal was to go from a call center to a Service Management center. But a few things happened. The first thing is the call volumes increased. This is very good news. It means it is now easier with the technology for our operatorses to reach the control sent center and to be able to ask for help and support. The second thing is the time for call increased. We now have the ability to track all this information digitally. But the Digital Information takes more time to enter than just scribbling on a piece of paper. But our Staffing Levels for various reasons remained relatively flat. So weve taken the same number of people. They are now managing more calls and more time per call. And then weve said why arent you line managing . They are not line managing because they have no bandwidth to do so. The second challenge is that managing this operator shortage has a lot of consequences but one of the consequence is that our supervision staff is spending a lot of their time balancing service filling runs begging people to come to work, trying to schedule overtime. That all impacts our ability to do more sophisticated Line Management training. The third challenge is that in creating a new controller position and this field manager position, we as i said, we are competing with ourselves. So we have not seen the transit supervisor classification grow. We also have a very High Percentage of that staff that is eligible for retirement. This chart shows that both the age breakdown and the retirement eligibility. So retirement eligibility kicks in when you have when you are 50 years old and you have 20 years of experience. Most people at the end are not retiring until they hit that 62year mark. But as you can see, within our transit supervisor classification, we have over 15 percent of our staff that are fully eligible to retire tomorrow and a huge percentage that are approaching retirement. And then the last thing is its hard to be a transit supervisor. One day youre an operator the next day you are managing operators. And while we have some training, its not enough. Its not enough to give transit supervisors new transit supervisors the skills they need to be really successful in that role. So what we are doing is, and i truly believe in investing in super supervision, coupled with solving the operator shortage, will be the most impactful thing that we can do to improve our Service Reliability, enhance our Customer Experience and also better support our operators who by far have the hardest job at our agency. The first thing well be doing is over this current fiscal year, we will be filling in existing vacancies and redirecting some vacancies to hire 50 new supervisors. That will help us with a lot of backfilling of needs and gaps. We will also be requesting an additional 50 positions in the fy21 budget as a way to focus on our core strategic goals. We are also working hard to continue to build a serviceoriented work culture to make sure that thinking about the Customer Experience is the first thing in the minds of our supervisors. And part of this we believe, will come from consolidating the training function. So to make sure that we have a single group that is responsible not just for new operator training, but for training our operations workforce to be successful in their role. And then the last piece is providing enhanced training to our supervisors both on the Line Management tools, which theyve been getting in pieces throughout and were able to spare them from the call Centre Functions but also on things like mentoring, Safety Compliance and some of the other key roles that they play. Now shifting to the 90 days plan. These are our core targets from the last 90day plan. When i come back, we will be increasing some of these targets, because as we have success we want to make sure we are continuing to move the line. We have seen a reduction in preventable collisions. Thats True Investments like making the rear of the vehicles more visible, giving operators more guidance onto how pull in and out of stops when blocked by cars and double parkers. We have also had some good success focusing on our infrequent routes where the schedule adherence is so important. And part of that has been through direct conversations with our operators on the work they do and really helping them to understand how important the leaving the terminal is on time for our customers. We have increased Service Delivery. We were at 96 percent in october. We are closer to 97 percent right now. We have not seen weve seen a little bit of a drop in our headway adherence on our frequent routes. Some of this is because we have shifted over and are focusing increased service on our equity routes. So well show you that we are tracking both of those. We did have six subway delays this month. Ill go through the details. Two of them were unavoidable. It was an earthquake and bart disruption but it still had an impact on our customers. In october we got close to meeting our lrv4 goal. We targeted 40 a day. Our goal is to have 48 of the new cars out on a daily basis. This shows the collision trend. But for a spike in july, we have been steadily declining. So we will be reducing this target for a second time as part of the current 90day plan. This shows the Service Delivery. As you can see, it is starting to scale up. We did have a class graduate in november, which is also providing relief and we will have another class graduate in january. For the major delays, in addition to the earthquake and to the bart incident, we did have three delays that were related to vehicles and to foreshadow my next item, they are an area of vulnerability for us. And while on a whole, we are seeing as good if not better miles between breakdowns than weve seen with this fleet its still too high. And then the last one and we are going to come in january with a presentation on what we are recommending for the new train control system, but we did have a hardware failure. The reason that a train control failure currently is such an extended delay, it took us 40 minutes is because we had to reestablish communications with every train in the subway. And that is unfortunately one of the design flaws or antiquated design aspects of our current automatic train control system. And its something that the new system as we continue to pursue it will not experience. Travel times back. And for the most part, pretty flat. But we did see an uptick on the klm. So what we are doing is revisiting all the investments that we made at west portal to make sure that they are Holding Strong and that we are proactively managing the intersection and doing everything we can to reduce delays between forest hill and west portal. But do you think that uptick is correlated to the west portal change or in spite of it . I believe in spite of it right. Okay. The trains are running better than the airconditioning in this building is what you are saying . [laughter] not just because im on the hot seat. This shows our continuing positive trend in vehicle availability. We are predicting to have 164 trains ready for service tomorrow which is absolutely the highest number that ive seen in my tenure at the agency. So we are excited about this. We are excited to be putting more trains in service and for the service to be available to our customers. Any three cars in that mix tomorrow . Not tomorrow. But soon. Very good. But not soon enough. As we look to our next 90day plan, which will wrap up at the end of january, we are focusing in five strategic areas. Safety and Service Reliability will continue to follow on key actions outlined by my managers. But we will not have any new initiatives for the subway. Our focus will be entirely on developing a twoyear plan with incremental improvements to the subway. It will include things like activating the west portal cross over, initiating a threecar shuttle replacing the remaining switches, switch machines in the subway. And it will map everything out for this board for feedback. That sounds like Christmas Morning to me. [laughter] we dont want to send the message that we think its very important to communicate to our customers and to you all as policy makers that while we are place replacing the train control system is a Critical Path item, there are a lot of things that we can do in the short term to improve the Customer Experience in the subway. So while that will allow us to have a Robust Service going into the future it does not mean that we are sitting on our hands for the next five to seven years waiting for that investment to materialize. Rail maintenances is our fourth area. And the last strategic area is to really take a focused look at employeegenerated Service Improvements and make sure that we are doing a big push to implement all the great suggestions that we get from operators and other staff along with route things like putting posts where we have double parking, trimming problematic trees and strengthening the feedback loop so the people that know that that have made the suggestion know their suggestion was followed up on. Theres been strong feedback weve gotten from our partners and something we are invested in making happen. And then the last thing i wanted to conclude with is a ridership update. We did see a slight drop in ridership in fiscal year 19, although i still think that theres some exciting positive trends. And i would put a strong emphasis on slight. Nationally, systems are seeing a lot of ridership loss, particularly because of things like tncs and other choices. Weve been able to hold our own. But getting some of these investments that weve been talking about on the ground is going to be critical to growing ridership which im optimistic that we will begin to do. Ridership on the rapid bus on our smaller connector routes that take people from the hilltops into the core system and express routes, we did see increase this fiscal year. Cable car observed the largest decline in ridership especially on the weekend. So thats something that we need to take a hard look at. You will see if you are following the graph a shift from trolly coach to motor coach. Thats not a ridership drop. Thats because of the motorizations we have underway to support the construction project. So thats just a shift thats not a drop. Taking a deeper dive into the various Service Categories we have more granular data on the bus system, because we do have automatic passenger counters on the majority of our fleet. The hundred or so that dont have it will get automatic passenger counters on the midlife overhauls. Whats pretty cool about the automatic bus counter is that tmc can track them in realtime. So we know how crowded all the vehicles are. So if we have to make a decision about turning back one bus or another, they can choose the bus that has the least customer impacts. So we did see a 3 percent increase year over year on our rapid bus and an he know bigger increase if you are looking between 17 and 19. We did see a slight drop on our local buses as well as our grid bus routes. Those are our long routes. They come relatively frequently. And they are i think by far having the hardest time compete ing with the other choices because they dont come very often and then they get stuck in traffic. This slide show cases some of our rapid investments. As i said looking back to 2017, we have seen a 14 percent increase in ridership with the largest gains being on the 28r and 5r. We did year over year see a slight decrease on bayshore geary and mission corridors but when you look over a twoyear trajectory its about a five percent increase. Soy continue to feel we are making investments in our service whether its through frequency or travel time improvements, that customers are reacting to that in a really favorable way. Not counted in our ridership because of the kind of Strict National reporting requirements is our special events ridership. I do want to flag that in addition to the 223 Million People that we carried on our regular service we also carried hundreds of thousands of people on our special events service. For example, we are carrying 35 to 40 percent of the gate at almost all chase concerts and basketball games, which is having i think an incredible benefit to making sure that we are not seeing a lot of congestion in the area, the hospital access is maintained and that we are getting People Places in a sustainable way. So thats i think, while not folded into the full number, it is i think an important piece of our overall ridership story. So thank you for indulging me the time. I wanted to make sure we covered a lot of these topics. Im happy to answer any questions that you have. Is there any Public Comment on this portion . One one. Please. Some questions. One is this report going to be reviewed by the muni task force . This is in essence, this is a presentation by a member of the management to the board to the public. But its an internal document. Its an internal presentation. I would like to see it subjected to review by the task force which ms. Borden is cochairman of. Two i noticed that as far as the Service Delivery goes buses are behind schedule, like the clement runs at 26 minutes when it should run at 20 minutes. And i think that its very uneven as far as the service goes. And three as far as the internal culture of mta its a real problem of bullying that goes on. Workplace bullying. And i would like to see this addressed. Because workbased bullying translates into poor Service Delivery. It affects productivity of an agency. And thats been proven by research. So we really need to address that and i know instances where bullying goes on. Its not a secret anymore. So this agency really has to start addressing it. And basically, i think what has to be examined is the command communication control structure and the operating systems. This really has to be subjected to review, because i think a lot of this problem has been externalize ed, and the service routes, bus stop consolidation the rest of it, when the problem always starts at home. Thank you. Thank you very much. One more Public Comment on this item. Welcome back. Thank you. I dont know what agenda item this is, but id like to get those charts. But my question is regarding hiring of new employees santa cruz sends out daily notices saying theres no service over the highway 17 from santa cruz to san jose employee shortage. Valley Transportation Authority basically had a slug of retirees you read their minutes people with 38 years, 30 years all retiring. And now that you got a daily email from vta saying well, expect expect no service on these lines. So with the low employment, unemployment, im reading the charts, and weve got all these expectations of hiring. And im saying, you know, you got problems in the south bay and other transit agencies how do we expect to overcome that to be able to meet these goals of increasing our Employment Opportunities for the training. So i just want to put on the radar screen theres other transit agencies that are experiencing service delays. And they are putting it out there every day saying these are the three lines or whatever that are not providing adequate service. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Mason. All right. Any more Public Comment on this . Okay. Is there anyone else who wants to speak on this item . Seeing none, this will be our last public speaker on this item. Actually, i have a question about my Public Comment. I was coming here to talk about the lrv seating but that has not been discussed yet. Next item. It will be. But i have an appointment to go to. I promise you it will be the next one. So how long will it take because i have an appointment to get to . Could i just give my testimony now . Because i have to go. I have an appointment. Its the next item. We are going to call it as soon as Public Comment for this item is concluded. This one . Okay. Because im going to have to get to another appointment. We understand. If you would like to put it in writing, you can absolutely submit it. In case theres not time. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Directors, any questions or comments . Director heminger. Ill be brief. First i wanted to ask about the retirees. A hundred per year. Is there any way within the citys retirement system that we can offer these folks some incentive to stick around for a couple . Even under your best case its a couple years before we are back to a hundred. I wanted to clarify. Its not a hundred retirements. Because some of them are people leaving prior to retirement. But it is the majority, in the order of 70. We do offer people that are retiring that have a good attendance and Safety Record an opportunity to come back, what we call prop f. It allows you to take your Retirement Benefits but then also be paid the hourly wage for your work. We are only allowed to use you for 1,000 hours a year but it still really help helps. So we have been able to attract some talent to stay that way but it hasnt been particularly fruitful. Im familiar with retired annuitantss but is there an incentive we could explore within the retirement structure that would permit that . Vicechair gordon and i could bring that up on friday because well have the director of hr for the city there to help answer questions yeah, because you go through a tremendous amount of