>> i would like to ask, if there were any of them who would be willing to come back another time? first of all? i know that is a lot to ask. but i would like to check with them and see if they would be willing to put it on another time and also to comment on the urgency on the item that they are just to speak on. >> and julie? >> i would suggest that we eliminate the following items. in the interest. and the health and the physical health of all of us, number, 8. ten, 11, 12, 13, and maybe we could combine, 14, and 15. and 8. sounds good to me, and i just did not take notes fast enough. >> 8, 11, 12, 13, combine, 14, 15, 16. >> okay. >> and something that you wanted to say on the director's report is that we had a new one, right? >> and there is a written copy, in the report. and so, continue item 8, and continue, item 10, and yes, or no? >> yes. >> yes. >> and item 12. >> continue item 11? >> continue, item 12? >> you said continue the director's report. >> there is a written report in the packet and so it does not need to be verbalized unless there are questions. >> got it, and maybe we call the item but it is not going to be much but maybe a question. >> or we could just continue it. >> my colleagues will promise to restrain themselves. and you know we don't have a lot more hearings with david and i feel like the chance that we are going to get the thoughts from him. and would that be okay? >> and he could give us his thoughts, and it is part of item 9. >> and maybe. >> and yeah? >> could we continue item 7 to the policy committee, and to seek to have continue five to for us and then we will do, three public comment, and four, tep, and six, clean construction, 9, special surprise, that is not so much of a surprise, and no director's report, then. and, then, we are going to combine, 14, through 16. >> okay, i know what it is. >> okay. >> commissioner? so we will, kind of collapse the 13 into our david love fest number nine. what do you think? >> yeah. >> okay. >> all right, so, colleagues, could i get a motion to approve the minutes? >> motion. >> and second. >> and any public comment on approval of the minutes? >> seeing none, public comment is closed. and all of those in favor of approval of the minutes, to approve the motion, or the motion to approve the minutes, please say aye. >> aye. >> any nays? >> the minutes are approved and could we hear the next item. >> public comment, and the members of the public may address the public, and are not on today's ago ahead agenda. >> any member of the public? >> seeing none, public comment is closed. could we hear item four? >>informational presentation on san francisco municipal transportation agency's transit effectiveness project (tep). sponsor: commissioners nicholas josefowitz and johanna wald; speaker: julie kirschbaum, operations and scheduling manager, san francisco municipal transportation agency, sfmta (10 minutes) (informational presentation and discussion) >> sf gov. >> i am the operating and planning and scheduling manager at sfmta and a big part of my job is focused on how to make the transit more convenient and appealing to our customers which i think folds really well into a lot of the goals, and i appreciate you guys and having me here and an opportunity to talk about the program, and i will be briefed because i know that you guys have had a long day. and as an agency, sfmtc, and a sustain able san francisco and there are a lot of pieces to it and my focus is on the transit service and the services and one of key ways that we are looking to improve the environment and make san francisco more sustain able is by getting more people out of their cars. and including giving transit more priority and traffic and increasing service and better connecting the people on transit routes. and over the next five years we will be turning over the entire fleet and complimenting the already, extensive fleet that we have with a full hybrid bio diesel fleet. and the transit effectiveness projects from all of this is how do we improve the transit mode share and make the transit more appealing and it was a comprehensive approach to the system and it was very much, data driven as well as driven by the extensive community out reach, and we are at an exciting point now because we have completed our environmental work and we are preparing to implement over the next two to three years. and for those of you who ride the muni you know that we have challenge and traveling through a dense, urban environment and not having enough service out of the system and these were many of the problems and talking with our customers and also, we have the positive problems, and our ridership is at a 5-year, high and it is only projectwhat is the most important in making the trips in san francisco and the most important thing that we heard from people is that we want the service to be reliable. and we want it to be 20 minutes today, and 20 minutes tomorrow. and they don't want it to be 20 minutes one day but then on the bad day, oh, i am waiting an hour and a half, and we also found that about two-thirds of san franciscans are time sensitive and that they are always going to take the quickest option, available to them, and so, in addition to improvement of the reliability and aaddressing the crowding, and making transit quicker and giving the people quicker choices by transit. and for this assessment, and we looked at a huge amount of information, and but, one of the most valuable, i think, was that we equipped about 30 percent of our buses with automatic passenger counters, and there are on every bus, and sorry around 30 percent of the buses and on every door and they, they are like two laser beams and if you tried them and we have rich information about how the people are getting on and off the buses at every top and how crowded the bus was and what time of day and we were able to make the strategic recommendations. including to the north, we have geary and california and in the south we have the mission corridor as well as the geneva corridor and the juda corridor and these heavy rider ship corridors were carrying 75 percent of the customers and so when we look to make improvements to the travel speed, and these were the corridors that we focused on. and as i said, we also do this work, with an extensive amount of community out reach and it really helped, i think, enhance and enrich the over all, proposal and it gave the board the confidence when they endorsed the proposals at the end of march that they reflected the needs of the community and the proposals do have trade offs, and some of those trade offs were part of what, our community dialogue focused on. and the program has three elements and the first is a policy framework, and the second is service and route changes, and the third are capitol eninvestments. and they combine with the network to allow you anywhere in san francisco without making one transfer and that is really what makes living in san francisco without a car viable and then we have the circular network and these are the smallest routes and travel from the hill top into the original node and providing the basic access for folks. and a lot of these circulate networks needed the tweaking and now it stops right now within the four blocks of the station and so it gets you almost to there but not all the way there so that is an example of the service improvement that the tp is recommended. the over all service changes represent a net service increase of 12 percent, and includes some redesigning of routes to stream line the travel and improve the efficiency and it very much focuses on connecting the networks better. and there will be a new 28 l that connected the richmond and the sunset, and the outer mission. and it will lead to reduced crowding and modifies or discontinued the low rider ship segments and then it expands the limited stop service and so, on the busy corridors for example, the five folton and we recently introduced the limited spot service and when you start needing service, every four or five minutes, sometimes, there is an opportunity to add a second type of service, and that gets the people where they are going more quickly and so some people are going to take that local service that works well for them but a lot of people will opt for the quicker trip. and the capitol investments take a cost effective transit in providing priority in the traffic and that includes, for example, the j, church pilot that we have out right now, and and it also includes, things like with the term restrictions and stop consolidation, as well as, particularly in our rail lines, we are stopping the train very frequently because there are so many stop signs, for example, injuda and looking for ways to stop the stop signs for the traffic signals that we can time to anticipate the train coming. and the environmental benefits of the tp are extensive. and we need to increase the greenhouse gas emissions by providing the increased service and we also will reduce the vehicle miles traveled through the and it will be 25,000 to 45,000 when it is implemented and we recently completed the air quality analysis under the sequa and we did notify any significant impacts, related to the program. and so some of the other benefits of the tep include, reduced crowding and more convenient, transit connections and improved reliability and enough up to a 25 percent travel time reduction, on those busy 15 corridors and reduce the transit collisions and enhance the pedestrian safety is also a key out come of the program. and where we do have the trade offs for example, in some cases, where recommending removing stops, we have really tried to minimize those trade offs and so, for example, we are focusing the stop removal on the heaviest rider ship routes and over all 97 percent of stops will be retained. and this is a map of the tep, as well as some of the brt corridors that we are working on and the pedestrian high collision network and as you can see there is an overlap, and so, with the tep, we will also sefrk as is a delivery mechanism for enhancing the pedestrian safety, and which will help us to reach our goal of zero fatalities over the next ten years. and also, we will improve the mode share by making not only the transit. just approved a two year budget that increased a ten percent service increase and three percent that will be rolled out as early as this fall and 7 percent in the second fiscal year. and the tp was identified as a high priority in the task force and that was a task force, but the mayor established, and that to identify the funding sources to sustain our transportation system moving forward. and the tep, was included as a high priority for that program. and we are currently pursuing two funding mechanisms, for the current november ballot, including the 500 million dollar, geo bond, and it would not be in additional it would be uppeder way and 150 million of it will go towards implementing the transit project and the funding sources also identified, the resources for the new and larger vehicles, which are also critical to delivering the service improvements. and i know that the commission josefowitz and wald were sponsored for the conversations and so maybe, if the commissioner josefowitz if you would want to? >> it is a tremendous program and i don't know how you guys are thinking about telling the folks about how successful, it will be, and it will hopefully be, and so, that you can get the credit and really improve in the people's travel times, which i think is, and as you said, even more important than that, and just the decreasing in the variability of the people's travels times and i know that like, for instance, when there is a public works project and there is a nice, little, sort of poster or a sign that says, you know, this was paid for by, you know, american reeninvestment act or whatever it was and that was tremendously helpful in helping sort of the people and coming for them. >> and, that is really, great, feedback. and what we are doing, now. is developing a communication strategy called muni forward. and that takes not only the transit effectiveness projects, investments but also, the new vehicles, and some of the infrastructure investments that we are making and develops the communication strategy around them. and the transit effectiveness project is sort of a clunky planning tool. and so, in terms of communicating we are looking forward for the muni forward as that vehicle. >> one of the things that i think might be really interesting, and it would be to sort of, you know, put on, when a bus gets to its destination to be able to say without it would have taken you maybe not tap as sort of the right product and the right term, but you know if we had not done the stock consolidation and all of these things that a bunch of people complained about because it is changed and the people explain about change. you know, you would not be here, for another 7 minutes. but, you know, given that we do all of this stuff, now you are. because i think that it is really difficult to get the people jazzed, to get san franciscans jazzed about the nuts and bolts about the transit improvements. and but, it is so important. to making the system function properly and maybe there is a way of kind of using this as an opportunity and a teachable moment, maybe. and to sort of generate, and enthusiasm for this type of project and because tap is one thing and this is the type of i, imagine, this is sort of an ongoing project that needs to be revise and improved upon. >> thank you. >> i think that the five limited pilot that we have out there right now which is saving people five to ten minutes a trip would be a great opportunity to have that kind of message. >> and i don't know if there is a way to coordinate with the department of the environment when it does sort of the commuter benefits to out reach. and where, we can say, where the department could maybe go to the folks and say, you know, i just wanted to let you know, that you know, if you, and i don't know, if you, and i don't know, maybe just a bit too complicated and go to the employer, and as they do the transit route, as they do sort of helping the people sort of map out what the transit routes would be best for them and you can say, you know, this is actually that route that you used to take and maybe you tried it once and it is now ten minutes fas ter and you should give it another go and it is incorporating that in the department's out reach. >> thanks, commissioners. >> commissioner steve on >> and at the beginning of your presentation, my screen had something kind of crazy on it and i couldn't see, maybe you would had a chart about this but the 50 percent goal that we have, where are we right now towards that? >> like what percent of strips are you taken in a single act? >> and i am just pulling it back up, i apologize that i do not have the current percentage, but i believe that we are are well on our way to meeting those, and meeting the goal. and you know, because of there is a lot of times of the day, where we are doing much better, than 50 percent. and for example, during the commute hour, and things like that, but getting to a 24-hour, 50/50 is taking that sort of over all approach. but, you know, transit increasing enough but i don't have the exact numbers. >> and along those lines, it was cycling a part of this assessment and did, sort of as you were looking at you know, removing the parking on mission street to help with the bus lines, was, you know, the bike lanes, and included in part of that assessment. >> well, we did look at opportunities to use the transit effect in this project as a delivery vehicle for closing the key gaps, in the cycling network in the same way that we are looking at it as a way to deliver the vision zero, but, the focus was transit. >> commissioner? >> thank you, for your presentation. and i understand that the top concern that the people have since the service reliability. and the constituents are working and always brought up the issues about safety, is it part of the recommendation, or is that the reactions that are going to be improving the safety on the muni bus or on the bus route? >> personal security, or the physical safety. >> both. >> and so, in terms of physical safety, we are reviewing all of the key collision areas as we developed that 40 miles of transit improvements. and on that pilot that i talked about for the five folton, one of the things that we did was, eliminate a lane of traffic, between or on the folton between central and stanyon, where the lanes were 9 feet wide but the bus is ten and a half feet so we were constantly having, side swipes and collisions there, and so we went from four lanes two in each direction to one lane in each direction, plus a center turn lane. and that allowed us to widen the lanes a little bit. there is also as i said a lot of pedestrian safety benefits embedded in the tp proposals and the proposals themselves don't specifically tackle the security, but we do know that there are locations where it needs to be a high priority, and we are working on the phasing of the project and one of the things that we are looking at on the protro, avenue is how we can pay lot the security measures along with the roadway and the service increases, because like you, we are hearing from constituents, that it is a high priority, and we had originally proposed some changes to the 27, and on the bryant and we ended up not implementing the changes, in part because we were hearing feedback that protro, was not working for the customer and one of the main reasons because of the security. >>