City and County of San Francisco Tuesday, February 19, 2019

please stand by

[Roll call]

Director, please be advised that director chiu will be

absfrenlts today's meeting.

Please be advised that the ringing of cell phone, pagers and other similar sound-producing electronic devices are prohibited at the meeting. Any persons responsible for one going off May be asked to leave the meeting.

Cell phones set on vibrate do

cause microphone interference so the board respectfully asked that they be placed in the "off" position. Approval of the February 5 regular meeting. >> ok. Absent any questions. I don't see any. Any public comment on the minutes? Seeing none, public comment is closed. I'll entertain a motion on the minutes. >> motion to approve. >> there a second? All those in favor please say aye? Opposed? Ok. >> item five, communications.

Directors, I have none for you at this time.

Number six, new or unfinished business by board members. >> ok. If I could start off with one request to our staff as we all honor black history month,

there has been some suggestion abcertainly great approval from discussion of the board members on honoring rosa parks. of course, a pioneer in civil rights who started her

pioneering in transit and Mr. Peskin, I know you're aware of the update for communications

and if we can get an update on where we stand in the efforts to honor Ms. Parks. >> I would be happy to.

We can bring you an update at our next meeting. We received the request that I think many of you saw last week or the week before.

And so we've been developing some concepts in terms of how we'd implement it. It's something that we'd like to get the board's feedback on. >> wonderful.

And because it's not agendaized today, we can't do it in detail. But I sense the will of the board that we'd very much like the hear about that as soon as you're ready to propose it.

Very good.

I know that there is a couple of other items of new or unfinished business. I'll start with director torres. >> thank you.

An update on the randall street proposal. I believe we have requested

that two meetings ago. >> we did get a memo on it. It's in the e-mail. >> I know. But I'd like to hear about it publicly. >> ok. So, I don't have anything to speak to it at this moment beyond what was in the memo. >> right.

I think it is under "new and

unfinished business" and what director torres is saying he'd like a chance to hear about it publicly in a meeting so he can ask questions and get further comment. Am I correct? >> yes. Very quickly. >> yes. So, if possible to put into our next director's report or make

its own agenda item, I think that would be appropriate and

it is larger than -- if I understand director torres and some of the concerns of the other board members, it is

larger thaten this one pod.

It's really about how we solicit public input, react to

public input and plan to put in these pause. And wrather than dealing with this on a one-off basis, I suspect the idea is to have something presented to this

board so we can understand staff's vision for how that would work and perhaps provide guidance on it. >> thank you. >> can I just add to that?

I think it's just the process by which the staff, how these are identified, if there is an ongoing list that exists that can be made publicly available

that people can know about.

The criterion that exists for evaluating and then how alternatives are considered. How those are weighed. How those are also evaluated. And then, you know, the timeframe from start to finish when people can expect from the first time they hear about it

to the end that an installation will actually happen. These projects happen much quicker than our own projects so they seem to catch people upon surprise. >> very good.

Ok. Other new or unfinished business? Director brinkman. >> thank you very much.

A few months ago, vice chair

borden and I brought up the access of howard street during events and I've been hearing more and more about that from the public in terms of not

being able to walk or bike through howard street when the

events are going on and it used to feel like oracle world and sales force but there was one this last week and I heard from a lot of people the inability

to walk or bike through there hits people hard because especially for the cyclists going over. I feel like we need to try to

come up with a solution for that and I'm sure we have amazing staff who can help us on that.

If we can put that on our to-do list, that would be great. >> absolutely. It is something that we started

looking at after the last round

and ieng just last week again there was another one.

We've already sent some communication over to the convention center folks that we'd like to explore different ways of doing that. >> excellent.

Thank you, director. >> any new or further unfinished business? Seeing none, we move on to item seven which is the director of transportation's report. Mr. Risken. >> good afternoon. thank you, Mr. Chair. Members of the public, board and staff. A few things. Just a few brief things I want

to cover.

And then we'll get an update

from our transit director as

per your previous request. Muni metro service. The southeaster row vision action strategy that we spent

some time in depth with you on,

back at the workshop we did in January will be -- we are ready to release it next thursday. So, that is coming out.

And I think we got some good feedback and discussion from

you when we presented it. But next thursday we'll be releasing it to the general public. It was collaborative work of a lot of folks not just within the agency, but a lot of

feedback and engagement from other agencies and folks outside the city.

So, excited to be hitting that milestone out to chart the

future of how we get to 0 by

2024.

And two other project updates

one with regard to the gear ri rapid project, otherwise known as phase one of the gear ri V.R.T. We scheduled a groundbreaking for last week.

But the weather was not cooperative with an outdoor

event.

So while we didn't do the groundbreaking, the swork advancing.

E -- the work is advancing. We will reschedule the groundbreaking because we do

want to honor the work culminating many years of planning on the busiest bus line on the city that is going to have a pretty dramatic effect both on the safety of

people on the corridor and the transit reliabilities and

service of the people who ride

on the 38 and the 38-r. What is happening on the ground, just to remind you, is

that the first set of transit

and safety treatments, which includes side running bus-only lanes, that was completed at the end of last year. What we could do without the capital project.

So, with paint and some parking and traffic changes that you all authorized.

I think it was last fall.

And now the utility work to

replace the sewer and water

systems between masonic and van ness is what has kicked off in

this phase. Other major upgrades including traffic signal upgrades, repaving the street, puting in

new crosswalks and sidewalk

extensions for both bus and pedestrian [Inaudible] Will follow and they're expected to continue for the next couple of years.

In other words to minimize disruption, this is work that we're doing in coordination

with other city agencies so as part of this project, san

francisco public works will be repaving 1.5 miles of geary.

The department of technology will be installing one and

three quarter miles of fiberoptic conduit and this is

pursuant to the dig one ordinance passed by the city

numerous years ago, which is whenever we're doing major road work. We let the department of technology to know that examples for them to join the project to get fiber in the ground and this is one good

example of that happening. And as I already mentioned, the

water and sewer work, we're partnering with the public use utilities choice ining replace a mile and a half of sewer and

two miles of water lines and this is all happening in

advance of the roadway work that will follow.

Lots of information on our

website and people can sign up

for text or e-mail updates as the project progresses, but

want to let you know despites the groundbreaking

postponement, that the work is, indeed, under way.

And then the other project update regards the patruro yard

which is at 17th and mariposa. It's more than 100 years old.

It is one of our two oldest

facilities and it houses 138

trolley buses, including all of our 60-foot trolley buses. Because of its age, it is in

need of a complete rebuild to make it seismickically safe,

but also to make it more functional for the time of service that we're asking for

and it was obviously built at a

time of streetcars and a very different technology, very different working requirements for staff.

So, for a number of reasons it

needs to be really rebuilt in other words to service today's needs and modern trolley fleet and the future electric fleet that we have and will have at muni.

As part of the planning effort for the reconstruction of the

yard, we're holding two public workshops to engage the

community, not only about the reconstruction of the yard

itself, but the fact that it is a full city block and large

city block footprint. There is opportunity for us to

build above -- to build above

the maintenance yard. So, while we have an opportunity to rebuild the

maintenance yard consistent with the M.T.A. Facility's vision back from 2012, there is an opportunity to make a better

use of that site.

Especially in this time of

scarcity of housing and other needs. As it is a very large and would be a very large construction and development project that the community engagement and

process will be important.

So to that end the two workshops we're holding will be this thursday and saturday. Thursday is 6:00 P.M. To 8:00

P.M. And saturday is 11:00 A.M. To 1:00 P.M., held at the

mission arts center at 745 tree. And it will be an opportunity for us to both share kind of

the needs and the importance of the facility but also start getting feedback from the

community about what could be much more detail.

We're excited for that to be moving forward as the yard itself has significant needs. But there is other needs in the city that we can address

through this promise as well.

Now I want to ask our transits director julie kirshbalm to give you an update on metro

service.

>> good afternoon. I'm here to really give the

first of what is going to be a monthly presentation on

tracking both accountability

and progress on the -- on the subway performance and the

transit service more generally. My apologies for the paper version.

I did not get the electronic version up loaded. The way we're approaching the subway as we discussed at the

January 15 meeting, is focusing

in two paths.

The first is to reduce the daily delays. The travel time availabilitier. The congestion. It's caused by thing like

having too many trains on to the subway at once, having a noncommunicating trains.

But the customer impact is that they're stuck between stations or a trip that is supposed to take 15 minutes and ends uptaking 20 mince or closer to 25 minutes.

Abthen the second path is to

reduce the number of incidents, the actual major breakdowns that we're experiencing on the subway that stops things in both directions. And on there, what we're trying

to do is reduce the number of incidents, but also respond

better when we have them.

So in our reducing of daily delays, we are focusing in

several areas. Where I think we made the most success in the last month and

what I really wanted to call to your attention is steps we have

taken to improve how we managed west portal.

West portal, as you know, is where the K.L.M. All come in

and out and it is also a source of tremendous pedestrian

activity as well as bus and auto activity, all contributing

to delays.

What we've done over the past

several weeks is we have, first of all, improved the software so that trains are now getting

enough time to actually go through the intersection.

We were having a software issue

where sometimes we were giving trains 30 seconds and other times we were giving them 15 seconds. It's ok. Yeah.

So, we were just -- we were -- the trains were time out. So, that's been fixed.

But I think more importantly is we've put P.C.O.S at the intersection and we've also

changed how we're managing the location with inspectors.

So, the P.C.O.S are helping us manage the pedestrian activity

and also some of the auto

activity. Sometimes autos are confused by the train signals and they don't whauns their role is,

especially with the train role. And then by having the P.C.O.S there to manage the pedestrians, it gives the inspectors more confidence in expediting trains because they know that we're going to have safe movement through the intersection.

And then the last thing, you'll see this photo on the lower right.

[Coughing] What that is, it's a local train control panel and what it

allows us to do is rather than having individually call trainsinger it allows them to control the movementses at the intersection.

Rather than having it come first come-first servingersinger, they can make decisions on what we need from a service perspective. So, at 5:30 at night, if we

have four trains trying to get

out of the subway, we can expedite them and maybe hold

for a minute or two a train

trying to get into the subway. So, this local control panel is something that we just got up and running. We're just now working through all of the training of our inspectors. But we think it has real potential.

And then what it's allowed us

to do, even in just a two-week period, we've seen a 40%

reduction in the delay approaching west portal. So, in the A.M. And P.M. Peak. That's what we're really trying

to influence is how much time people are spending stuck

trying to get out of west portal, kind of between that forest hill and west portal area that.

Queue. So, these movements and all kinds of interrelated actions that we're taking with the

P.C.O.S and with the inspectors, are helping to get people out of the subway more

quickly. Some of the other steps that we're doing, I'm really pleased

to report that the hardest phase of the warriors platform -- the mission bay platform

construction is completed.

As you know, we did not have access to our me toronto east

yard -- metro east yard for two week. That was something that we were concerned that would have an

impact on rail service returning more trains than the subway. We're not able to maintain

trains the way we typically do.

And we were storing trains on the surface at night.

Thanks to a lot of really hard work from the field managers tan people overseeing this service, we actually got through that very hardest

period with very little impact to the customer, which I'm really pleased about.

And as we continue through the March period, I'm confident

that we're going to continue to be able to provide a really high-quality service during the construction. The third area that we're

looking at to reduce delays is

how we manage our terminals. Embacadero being the most important one. There we have increased supervision and also trying to

increase the intensity of that movement so that training are turning as quickly as they can. I didn't give that a green check because that is still a

work in progress. We're still trying and different approaches to how we

communicate both with staff and trying different things. Increasing staffing levels. Change staffing levels.

That is something that we're going to continue to progress through these 90 days and then the last area, which is also something that we have started

to do a little bit of but will do more now that we have the hardest construction behind us is to use more gap trains so

that when we do have a gap in service, rather than doing a

switch back, for example, or letting the gap continue trying

to have trains strategically placed throughout the system so they can cover the slots. The first focus will be keeping

a train at the cameron beach yard. That is already preoped and ready to go out into system and that will help us close service gaps on both the m-line and the j-line. And then when 3rd street opens

up again, we'll look at several

locations along 3rd street and then kind of an additional

location would be in the mint

yard. So, that has been our focus on reducing delays. It has been really exciting for

me to see all of the different

disciplines throughout the agency come together on these prab problems. As we talked about, there is

really no silver bullet.

It takes a lot of small changes and, for example, the twork get the P.C.O.S throughout was something that came from ron forrest, our senior operations manager in the control center. Based on what he was seeing in the control center. And it has been really successful.

And then what we've been trying to do is then feedback that

information to the staff on the ground so that they know what

they're doing is working.

In terms of reducing the big incidents, there what we've been focusing on is the

vehicles and the infrastructure.

On the vehicles, we have used the M.M.E. Shutdown to move

forward our kind of two most critical campaigns right now. The first is adjusting the couplers because as we talked

about last time a lot of our issues with doors and steps and propulsion are actually related

to how the two cars turn around.

So, we've now done 46 cars total and we're working our way as quick as we can through the full fleet. But we use the time of the M.M.E. Shutdown where we had

about 30 trains that were at M.M.E. For that two-week period and all of those couplers were

adjusted.

So we're using the time we have

as strategically as we can. On the infrastructure side, we

have also put in our order to proactively replace the switch motors.

Unfortunately, as we talked about, the switches are old. It is a part that was not being manufactured.

We had to actually resurrect the manufacturing of that part. So, that is going to be about a six-month lead time. But the good news is that we

have it in the process and it will be ready and it is a pro-active campaign. When the switch motors come

here, we'll swap them out.

And then the other kind of two areas is quickening our response time. So, we have shifted staff now.

we have signal staff at church

and devoss and at embarcadero. It is a trade-off because it means that there's other parts

of the system, particularly like on the outter avenues and

the peak period that they area

not as quickly able to access.

But the subway, because it impacts the lines with the right place to put those

resource and we also moved a

rail maintenance as sort of a strategic way to respond quickly to incidents. And then the last area we're working on is the customer

information.

So improving the quality of our audio announcements and also getting to the new radios which

will allow us to have preset customer information into the trains.

We have really been pushing for the controllers and the operators to make announcements

in the trains.

But until we're on the new audio, that is sort of hit or Miss On how good the sound

quality is. So I'm really excited that we hit a major milestone this

weekend where we got the

digital information up and running in all of the new trains. That is something that we have really been working hard at.

And so within the next month or so, we'll see the audio cut over and that is going to, again, really improve our ability to make good announcements into the trains when we haven't since. Again, the goal being to reduce

the number of incidents we have overall, but to communicate more proactively when we're

having them. Since the last meeting, we have

been working really hard to try

to develop what we think are the best metrics to track our

progress in the subway. These don't replace the last

targets we had with the 90-day plan and are continuing to look

at for the overall system. But they complement it by taking a deep dive into the subway.

And just in developing these

metrics, we've learned a tremendous amount about the service.

That is helping us shape what are going to be the future interventions. It has been a really good opportunity to take a step back

from responding to each emergency and actually develop new and different ways of looking at the subway than we

have in the past.

The metric that I am -- I was the most excited about it because it tells us the most. Although I think we have a lot of work to get it to where it

needs to be is subway delay.

We have a real technology

wizard, dan howard, who went through our atcs data and looked at the travel time of every single train.

And what we did was he created categories and broke the subway down into categories.

For every time the train is stopped at a platform for more than 30 seconds which we consider kind of the typical

what you need to get people on

and off, he captured the delay.

And anytime a train was between stations, not move, a he captured that as delay and broke it out by locations so

now we can see in a very

precise way, when we do an intervention on west portal, we can look the next day and see

did that intervention work? What we've done is captured the overall minutes of delay,

whether caused by congestion or

caused by an incident and our

goal would be over the next 90-day period to reduce that delay in the peak periods by 10%.

And so what I like about this

metric so much is that it captures not just the big incidents, but also the day-to-day congestion that customers are experiencing on the line. The second thing we looked at and we talked about this at the January meeting was the total

number of delays that lasted more than 20 minutes. That is more important for the extreme situations.

So, if we can't get those big delays down, people will start to long for other ways to

travel.

It is naornlt we have not these big delays. The third thing is how long it was taking to travel in the subwayment and interestingly

enough and I'll share in a

chart the actual kind of average or median travel time is not changing very much. It's very stable. What is changing is the

variability. So, it's averaging to, you know, about 17 minutes to go

from west portal to embarcadero but

the customer experience is varying quite a bit. So for that we're recommending a target not to change the overall average travel time but to change the variability.

To tighten the distribution.

And then the last thing is the embarcadero turn-around times because it is such an overall indicator of the health of the

subway.

This is the chart that is

showing total subway delay.

The green line is the P.M. Peak and the blue line is the A.M. Peak.

You can see in general the A.M.

Peak is more stable than the P.M. Peak, in part because we're having more problems sending stuff out than sending stuff in. You can see that dip in the middle there. That is during the twin peak

shutdown. We had less trains in the

service so there was less delay.

But also fewer trains created

and less delay and congestion. I believe that that reduction

is not just caused by the reduction in trains but also by

how much better the system operated with fewer trains in

the subway. This next chart shows, by

month, the number of incidents that we're having. We looked at two metrix.

One is delays that were 10 to

20 minutes and then the second was delays over 20 minutes.

In both cases, trying to reduce the number of significant subway delays that we're

experiencing in the system.

This third chart here showss the subway travel time.

The gap in the middle for the k.L.M. Was during twin peaks because we weren't running twin peak service.

But as you can see, it is relatively stable.

If we're just looking at the

median travel time but these next charts here show the

distribution.

The j and the n have relatively tight distributions.

Although this long tail is related to the major incidents I was talking about. So, when things get totally

stopped.

I think the more challenging

distribution is what we're

seeing here on the K.L. M. And this is what the customers are experiencing day in and day out. >> guess which one of these

they remember.

>> exactly. Tightening this up is the

primary focus of our program.

This last chart here is the subway through-put. I know it is -- I'm asking you

guys to maybe be more statisticians than you typically are. But the middle line here shows the average time it takes to turn around a train in the A.M. And P.M. Peak, whether you're going to the near pocket to far

pocket. What we need is for as much of these bars to be below that red line as possible.

In order for the subway to really work reliably, we need

the majority of trips to turn in less than five minutes. When they take more than five minutes, we start to break the

schedule, which then creates the congestion that is

contributing to the chart we just saw, which shows this big stretch of travel time. So -- >> can I interrepresent you to

make sure I understand this?

Am I reading this to say that

it takes from the time it

leaves, let's say it's an l or

m slipping around from embarcadero, by the time it leaves the south sigh of the

tracks to the time it returns to the onboarding platform on

the north side of the tracks is roughly five to six minutes? >> yes.

But we actually include it from the time it arrives. So, it includes the transfer of operators.

But, yes.

>> but on a trip from the other numbers averaging 17 minutes of

service time. So depending on how you do the math, somewhere between one quarter and one-third of a trim

of one of these trains actually spent spinning around behind the station. >> yes.

>> and maybe follow-up on that. What is the cause? I don't really understand why. People see the trains and see that they're not going out. >> yeah. >> what is that cause? >> there are a number of

factors. Just the movement itself

takings takes three and a half to four minutes depending on the near pocket or far pocket.

>> when you say "pocket," there's two turn-around -- >> thank you for clarifying. Yes.

>> curves behind the embarcadero station. if you are not going onward to

the ballpark, you see those two spurs by which the turn can turn around. That's what you're referring to as pockets. >> yes. Thank you. So in order to turn the trains

as quickly as possible, we try to have somebody at the front of the train and the back of the train.

So, the time it takes to get

those folks on the train, the

time it takes to pull the train in and then to wait until there is a slot or a break in the congestion because we also have

trains coming into the portal

and then to land back on the embarcadero platform and sometimes it is small things that are human nature.

I go to relieve you while you use the restroom and I ask how are your kids?

How's your family? That May not seem like it is going to be harmful to the

overall health of the subway. But can actually lead to a lot

of delay.

Sometimes -- once it is in the pocket, the controller up in central, not quickly enough

getting it out of the pocket because of other things that they're doing to manage the subway.

So, there is a lot of different

intervention points. But the boots on the ground and

really trying to adopt more of

like a nascar pit type urgency is what I think is going to really take to start turning trains more quickly. >> just a question.

Is it a more manual?Ros what you describe sounds more manual

than technical. >> it's both.

The trains themselves, when they're moving, are in automatic.

But we do have staff at the front and the back of the train

in case there is any sort of intrusion into the track and we need for safety the ability to

stop the train. >> ok. If you want to continue, I apologize for interrupting. I will have more questions later. Fair warning. [Laughter]

>> absolutely. Again, while this is maybe not

the best public metric for our understanding of the overall health of the subway, this is a

key lead indicator. And our goal is as much as

possible to have as much of these blar charts below this red line.

So, you can see that it is

definitely taking less time to

go into the near pock tote the far pocket, which would make sense. Again, that P.M. Peak really

showing up as much more

variable than the A.M. So in addition to covering where I think we've made a lot

of progress, both in the

vehicle maintenance side as well as in expediting trains out of the subway, I did also

want to make sure that we

talked through the major delays that we've experienced in the -- for the most part in the subway.

Although one was on the surface

over the last month. the one that had the biggest impact to service was the one the day of the last board meeting which was the broken

switch at castro.

That issue was a mechanical issue, which is shown in this

photo here. This is the switch rod right here.

And this bolt was loose which

caused the switch to not fully move from one side to the other.

It was a mechanical issue. Similar to a mechanical issue that we had about six weeks back.

We believe that the solution is to change how we're installing

the bolts so that instead of

installing them face-down, we install them face-up, like what's shown in this photo here

so that you can see visually if

this bolt is loose or not. When it is upside down like

it's shown in this photo, it is hard to see without actually

getting under way this very kind of shallow bracket.

If it's connected or not.

But it also comes down to oversight on our preventive maintenance program because this is a mechanical issue that should have been caught during an inspection.

So, that is the other thing

that we've done is taken a look

particularly at our track preventive maintenance program

and increased the amount of management oversight so that Q.A. Issues like this are

addressed.

The second issue that we had

was a vehicle breakdown on the service at 22nd avenue.

It was not particularly unusual mechanical issue.

but the reason that I'm flagging it is the delay lasted

longer than it should have. And part of it was that we

needed to be able to tow the vehicleful and while we trained

everybody on how you connect an lev-4 vehicle to a braida

vehicle, there were still some hesitancy in the field.

So we had a broken braida t nearest vehicle that could have

towed it out of there was the

lrv-4, but there was hesitancy on staff's part to make that connection. So that is something that we've

been drilling in the yard and practicing more so that when we face that situation again, we can get that delay out as

quickly as possible.

The third issue was basically

from about July 31st to

February 3, we had an

intermittent problem where the

axle counter at church and debose was creating some

challenges. Here intermittent problems, unfortunately, are our hardest ones to diagnose. It ended up being a mode up

that needed to be replaced. But unfortunately until we were able to replicate this problem with the signal crew there, we

weren't able to fix it.

So, that is a one-off, fairly unusual, but it did create three or four days of unstable

service. And then the last area that we had since this presentation was sent out on February 14 in the

middle of the day, we did

experience an extremely rare situation where the train control system, which is

controlled by three computers all providing backup support to the others all failed at the

same time.

Which essentially stops all the trains in the subway, which is the critical safety response,

which it did.

And then requires us to communicate with every train to get the vehicles starting up

again.

We've been partnering with talus, who is the designer of our train control system on

that one and it ended up being a very unusual software glitch

so we'll avoid the problem

immediately by not doing that

movement and talus is in the process of developing a software development for that

fix.

So overall, we're currently in a 90-day stretch from January

15 to April 15. We're working in six critical

areas. The subway performance being, I think, our most intense focus.

We really felt that it was the most urgent both on the direction of this board but also on the customer experience. We're also continuing to focus very hard on safety.

We had a lot of success in the

last 90-day plan to reduce side swipes and want to don't build on that. The same is true with the rapid network. That was an area where we achieved our goal of reducing gaps in service so we want to

continue to do that. The mission bay platform has to be a strategic action area for

us because it is so complex and does require so much of our resources to manage. the fifth area is the customer

information.

And then misinforms and staff

engagement and morale. As I said in the beginning of presentation, I'm thrilled that our hardest portion of the construction is done.

On sunday, we did regain access

to M.M.E. The agency-wide collaboration has really been what's made

this project a success.

And a major lesson learned from

twin peaks that we wanted to do more to track comments and feedback in realtime so we

could react and respond so we have been getting weekly

reports on customer complaints.

The first week we received 65 complaints and that. Dropped down in the second week to about 29.

So, a 50% reduction. Some of the topics, the two

topics we heard the most about were construction noise, which we're work on with particular sites and also with the contractor.

And then in the first week we also heard about 11 complaints related to signage and customer information. But I'm very heartened that

those droped to three in the following months -- following week.

In part because we instituted and started doing signage audits and some of the early

kinks with the signage we were able to work out.

And then the last areas we have been managing the t-line bus gaps both with inspectors ton

the ground and also using tools from the transportation management center. in general, complaints on the t-line buses have been

relatively low. Reduced -- reducing the service

again continues to be a high priority, both rolling over from the last plan into this plan.

We have made a lot of positive

momentum on the rail side, particularly with L.R.V.S, delivering on most weekdays

100% of the service and for the

last two months exceeding our

prop-e goals.

We continue to not be delivering enough of the bus, both the trolley or the motor coach service so we're really focused on trying to have as

big a class as we can for March.

And have been partnering with

the mayor's office of economic development to increase the

class sizes as much as possible. So we'll continue to focus on

this. Our biggest challenge is

attracting people to the job. But everything that has happened over the last couple of months, I think, has promoted it as a positive job

opportunity and we're going to

continue to do that.

I wanted to conclude with our overall targets. For the most part, they rolled

over from our last plan.

We added in the subway delay. Reducing the subway delay by 10%. So, that in addition to the

kind of more micro dive that we're taking into the subway, we'll also carry that one over

as a good kind of target of the

overall health of the system.

Continuing to look at reducesing collision,

increasing the service delivery

and then reducing gaps in

service on our frequent lines and enhancing on-time performance on our less frequent routes. So thank you.

And thank you for bearing with

me on the overhead. I'm striebl answer any questions you May have. >> thank you very much. Do you have further items on your report or was this it?

>> I just had one other brief thing I neglected to mention. >> ok. We'll come back to that in a moment and then do public comment on the report all at

once. So, directors, are there

questions or comments for Ms. Kirshbalm? >> thank you for the thoughtful

presentation and for the follow-up on a request.

As I look at these targets and the metrix, not this page but earlier in the presentation, I

just have a kind of question

about balancing -- I guess balancing what's achievable

with kind of what the right

ambition is and similar to vision zero, he talked about hitting that goal.

I have a kind of big picture question about shouldn't the

target for delay be zero, right? And even -- I want to be,

again, cogny izant of all the realitis that you helped review in helpful detail. But there is something important of setting that as the goal that we want to have

zero delay and I wanted to

understand 10%, again, seems probably harder than it seems.

but how does that 10% put us on a trajectory to hit zero delay

eventually and have you map out what that trajectory looks like, given all the challenges that you discuss? I think there is something important about saying that our goal is eventually no delay and

some of these things like that there would be four major delays each month, understanding the current of six so we're taking that to fours and that might be a big move. It seems like the goal eventually should be zero so I wanted to hear your thought on that. >> absolutely. Thank you for coming back to this. I should have clarified that

these are intended to be 90-day goals and not where I think we want to get to the system

long-term.

I am relatively new to this metric of total delays so I'm not comfortable yet making a recommendation on what our

ultimately goal should be.

I will say we had 15,000 minutes of delay in just the

peak periods. So I think -- I'm not sure that

I think getting to zero is

realistic or maybe the customer

expectation of a healthy subway. But it certainly needs to be a lot less.

Than what we have.

I will say that I feel differently about the major incidents.

There I do think that the goal should be zero. I don't think that -- I think a

healthy subway system does not

have -- has a major breakdown,

is an anomaly and that is something that we do want to be striving towards. >> ok.

>> just a follow-up with that.

Do you know what other -- like within the industry standard,

what the benchmark is around the delays? Like obviously we'd love it to be 0. But is there some sort of

standard that we know of?

>> I'm not aware of another system that is taking this deep of a dive into their subway

metrics.

I do know when we looked at our on-time performance goal

relative to the industry that we were measuring and evaluating our service in a

kind of stricker or tougher way than is the industry standard.

I'd have to do a little more research on the subway-specific metrix. >> great.

A few more questions. One is that, you know, you talk about some of the new software

that we have coming on board

and I wondered, one of my concerns -- and we will talk later about software for the

essential subways. But how -- are we confident that the integration of the new work that we're doing is going to integrate well with some of

the patchwork that we have from the old system and how

we're going to test or be able

to test those things in advance of running the potential subway

when we can. >> if you want, I can try to respond to that.

First of all, the central

subway system, while ultimately will be the same control system

that we have in the subway, it doesn't have a direct [Inaudible] To it because the central subway crosses under the subway. It doesn't cross the existing subway so they don't have to interact directly. So, the central subway software

will skip all the older generations that underlie the existing main subway system. What we've been doing in the

last number of years in terms

of upgrading the train control

system is kind of moving away from those underlying patches and older equipment and we're

just in the final stages actually right now in the next

month or so to finally do the new cut over of the new system that will take a lot of that old patchwork and the risk associated with it out of the

system. It is the case, as with any

software, there are issues and bugs. The testing that we undertake for the software is pretty

rigorous. There's factory testing and then there is field testing

before we put it in revenue service.

The example that julie gave of certain train move, essentially knocking out the computer system one that, you know,

ideally should have been caught. But that was not. But the -- generally speaking,

the testing for the software is very rigorous and we've been getting better at it.

The risks that we have in the existing subway, many of which will not be present in the central subway. So they're somewhat different animals in that regard.

But I think we've been getting

a lot smarter on our technology systems. We eave been putting a lot of

them into place and in some cases laying over verial

technology and in some cases it's not so new by the time it is implemented. There's been a number of lessons learned in the last

five or six years that are positioning us much better to finish the existing one and to do the next such as the central

subway. >> related to that, do we have

technology that you talked about the broken switch on the castro. Do we have anything that allows

us to see anything like that in our system that -- you know, a red dot that just says

something is loose in some area that we can identify the focus on. Does our technology allow us to do that. Are we looking at technology that would?

>> think it is absolutely the

date of the practice to have as much self-diagnosing equipment

as possible. Certainly that was the tremendous change between like

our old traffic signals and newer traffic signals.

There are somes a pexes of our

infrastructure on the train

system that is self-diagnosing. But in that particular instance, it was a merry christmas cal issue and did not

have a self-diagnosing option. >> and related to that. I know that -- bart always talks about how their hours of being close reasonable doubt critical for the work that they

do in their tracks. What kind of off hour track work review work do we do? Because I don't ever hear about it and it would be interesting to know, other than when we

have those big promise.

>> every night between the

hours of 1:30 and 3:30 or 4:00,

we're in the subway typically

doing preventive mainl than on things like switches and overheads and track. But one of the things that

we'll be trying in this 90 days

is how can we extend that window?

For example, starting at 11:00 P.M., our subway traffic goes

down quite a bit. So we're going to experiment

with not using one of the pockets or the pullouts that I was describing so that we have extra time to do maintenance on

it. So we're looking for ways that don't have customer impacts but can stretch that time because

we want as much time as possible to do preventive maintenance so we don't have the sametime problems. Is, that s a great. -- >> that's great. Another thing you were talking about the customer information and we're getting better.

I get those alerts from the city whenever it is like don't go to geary and parker because there's been an explosion.

Or there's an accident.

Is there any way that we can

plug into that system to alert people about delays with trains

and give them information of other buses -- you know, these five buss are still going on market street to downtown or

whatever. Do we have the ability? Because the system is really effective. Granded if we're having issues every day, it is an overwhelming number of text messages that people are going to be getting.

But hopefully if we get close

to zero, that would be a way we can alert people about major

transit disruptions.

>> we could talk to the department of emergency management system in terms

whaof criteria they use.

And their aminability to incorporating ours. We have our own notification

processes that people can sign up for e-mail, text, twitter.

So, there's a lot that we have.

Whether or not the most significant of precipitation-related challenges can float through that D.E.M. System is something we can explore.

>> it seems to be it has a broader subscription network and people seem to pay attention to those. I'm not saying we shouldn't.

I'm a big fan of you want people to come where you are,

the most likely place to go is where people already are. And sometimes when you're on the train, you'll get a text message but you can't get on to your twitter account, for example. I think. let me see if there is anything else.

[Please stand by]

[Please stand by]

>> so I got this question when

we met two weeks ago and to sus

sane -- sustain that level of physical presentation will be a

challenge but to the extend we can't find another way to achieve the same goal it's our intent to leave them out there. >> okay.

>> we're hoping through technology or signage or

signalling to find a way to fake ma efficiency happen without

having to have a body present. To the extent it's effective and we have no other way of achieving that effectiveness I think we'll need to keep them there. >> great segue. We also control traffic in this

town.

Would it be worth exploring in

the morning hours when the

business is less likely to be

effective but traffic is robust to force them to the tunnel to make a right turn and other

allow a right turn to west portal for people crossing by the library such that there is

no crossrail traffic by autos

which I assume is the big impediment to the trains moving.

There's other ways to get what

is essentially northwest,

southeast, I guess, with 14th

avenue and other streets and it seems to me in the morning times when many of those businesses,

movie theatre, several

restaurants are not even open a traffic restriction May have

minimal impact on the business community but could impact the trains there. >> it's something we can explore. The traffic engineers have looked at this intersection and developed different approaches

many times over in mm years in

the last 20 years I've seen

reports date back to 1999 to try different things.

A traffic change of that sort I don't think we've thought about

just testing it.

It's something we could look at and we will continue to look at

more sustainable ways of making that intersection work better besides having a person standing there. >> okay.

And one of the things you've mentioned as the problem is one, it take time for the train to clear that administration and then you salt lake city issues with

you also have issues. And we have the loop proposal the train comes into the inbound platform and never leaves and

you have a continuous shuttle loop.

And I understood from our retreat that this is something

you would be open to look at if that is something you're looking

at, please in the next report or

report afterwards, let us hear how that research is going.

That segues to the embarcadero issue.

I knew the significance of the

issue on saturday morning at

9:30 about as unbusy as the system gets.

My son and I were on the way to

the alcatraz tour and we waiting

for the trains to clear in front of us 10 minutes.

Clearly there's a design flaw there. and I now understand it better thanks to your presentation that

turning those trains in the pocket take a long time and makes sense and that's a delay.

By my math, six of 23 minutes of

that trip is spent back with no customers. That's very wasteful. Again, the loop proposal where the train is on a shuttle and

comes into the inbound platform solves that and I think that's one of the reasons you saw the

efficiency during the twin peaks closure. You had the train on the loop

and that's a more efficient system. I hope you're looking at that because that's a way to solve the problems on both ends of the system.

Two more questions.

The mortarizing -- motorizing of

the issues is that more of a staffing issue.

>> Clerk:   more staffing.

>> and we redeployed the staff so we won't have that issue we had that day? >> yes. >> and the automated communications are nice but

automated and heard frequently

and don't give customers the comfort that their specific

attention is being paid to the issue there. So I think you need to double down on urging your staff when

there is an acuity issue to not

use an automated communication. To actually have central control or the driver come on and tell

the riders, look, here's what's going on, we're aware of it and here's what we're trying to do to fix it.

Because otherwise the customers are on the train thinking the issue is normal operations or

worse, unknown to staff.

So please drive out specific incident specific communications

and don't just rely on automated announcements.

I think those give the rider the impression no special attention

is being paid. Okay. That's the extent of my comments. Thank you for doing this and making it a top priority. My personal experience in the

last two weeks the service has gotten better but we need to sustain that and I appreciate your personal commitment to do so. If there are no further comments

the board on this issue, I'll

thank julie and ask Mr. Riskin

to finish his report and go to public comment.

>> one issue I left off, stockton street and union square

has been closed many years to

construct the union square market square station of the

central subway.

The physical work is complete

it's been restored such as the

small portion immediately to union square itself.

It's far enough along we can re-open the street to traffic of all sorts.

This thursday at noon together with the chinatown and union

square communities, having an

event to celebrate the reopening

of stockton street.

Initially, the 8x will be

rerouted or unre-routed back to

it's original result down stock

strong street until we complete the balance of the work to clear off the rest of the footprint to the union square.

The 30 and 45 will still go around but we hope by April the

30 and 45 will be back.

A huge milestone in terms of being able to return those

routes to their normal straight

shot south down to fourth street

but more generally for the neighborhoods to have those

spaces back in full use will be very welcome. So it's an important milestone and we're glad to be there.

>> good. An early sign of the light at

the end of the tunnel if you'll pardon the pun.

Thank you for that, Mr. Reiskin.

I'll call on public comment.

Ms. Boom perp -- boomer.

>> Clerk:   you have one person Mr. Whiner.

>> welcome back.

>> herbert whiner.

One problem I've noticed in the

subway the muni metro and I'd

like to see this addressed is on the weekend at 6:00 there's a

lack of service where you have crowded coaches. There's only one coach and many

people are squeezing in to that.

Notably the "m."

I think this should also be addressed. It's not only the gaps in

service but the accommodation of passengers.

This applies to the "j" line also. So I think this is something that could be focussed on as

well.

Also, in rect to the trolly service, the one california line

last week was very terrible

because people were waiting for the 1 california.

There were two switchbacks. then people finally got their bus but we waited for a very long period and people other than myself are quite angry over

this. So this is something that really

has to be focussed on because

the 1 california is one of your showpiece lines. It's one of the lines you focus

on. These are concerns I have and other people have. That's my comment on the report.

>> thank you, Mr. Wineert. Seeing no public comments we'll

move to item 8.

>> the citizens' advisory council report.

>> good afternoon, directors. I'll have a short report.

We had no motions at our most recent meeting. We heard a presentation about

the results of the employee satisfaction vare and the results senior survey and the

results are a little worrying.

Overall satisfaction among all

employees continues to decline.

And the gap in the job

satisfaction is widest between

management and fronline -- frontline employees. The one recommendation was to

bring back an employee recognition program.

This could possibly be achieved by partnership with a business community and local media.

So I'm planning to talk about this at a small business working

group meet being next week and I'd love to get that conversation going with the agency.

I think that would pay off a lot. Since you're going to be discussing today the third street transit safety project, I

wanted to note that the C.A.C. Heard a presentation about the project back in October and made a motion in support of it at that time.

The improvements to pedestrian

safety and mobility and the increased transit efficiency are worthy goals and we're satisfied with the project's design. Unless there's any questions from any of you, that's my report. >> you said you made a motion.

I assume the committee voted in

favor of our adopting this proposal? >> that's correct. >> thank you. Directors any questions?

I have one small request,

Mr. Ballard, as we focus on service and get the report if you can replay what was presented to us today and what

the focus is and if any of the C.A.C. Have recommendations for things we should be doing, please pass them along. >> certainly.

>> thank you.

Good to see you.

Any public comment on the C.A.C. Report? Seeing none public comment is closed. Item 9, Ms. Boomer.

>> Clerk:   opportunities to address the board to matters

within their jurisdiction of the

board and not on the agenda.

Starting with Mr. Whiner.

>> the podium is yours yet

again.

>> you guys probably got a memo

on the difficulty of get clipper card. I was passed around like a

football and trying to get a

card. I finally got the right person and I was informed I would get a new clipper card.

I had lost mine in 10 days. I spent over an hour on the phone trying to get the clarification of this and it was

really infuriating and of course I was furious on the phone. I was not the most pleasant person in the world to talk

with.

Now, this is a reflection of the internal operations of the agency.

Because there are other problems

also but when have you de

fefktive fefkt fefktive did de fective internal operations

and you untern allies

internalize the problems and

it's expensive on the taxpayers money and the rest of it.

I finally have my fast pass and

calm and the rest of it.

But the second thing is that

really el tereval is in sam -- shambles.

There's deleted parking spaces, the trains run slowly.

It's been a waste and disaster

and that's an example of what mta does. The philosophy is if you can't be part of the solution, be part of the problem and if you can't solve the problem, make it

worse.

Unfortunately this applies to

the el terevel.

>> Clerk:   matt staine.

>> at the last meeting you

requested there was a lot of discussion about the permits now

being held by the credit union

and there was a talk about

bringing kate turnan to explain the policy.

I expected a short presentation.

To tell you about the 170

permits taken back by the credit union.

And up until February 1, they really out on the streets but now they're hitting the streets.

So the credit union is leasing

them out to the various cab companies that will take them

and everybody wants them because

these the airport cabs.

Of course they're owned by an operation.

In October when they talked about right-sizing and prioritizing it seemed they were

trying to prioritize or right-size the credit union

because now the credit union will become a beneficiary of the policy that went into effect

February 1 where 800 cabs cannot

service the airport and some can and even revoked permits. And there's been an interesting

change in the list of the purchased medallions.

The credit union shows up as owning 20 to 25 or in that order. We have to start looking does

the credit union have possession

of these permits opposed to just

having a lien on them?

$170,000 a month, $2 million a

year will go to the credit union.

>> thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> Clerk:   matt buzina.

>> I hope the director and board

members are aware of the castro

station south elevator project. It's important for anybody who uses a wheeled device including

many members of my family with

my daughter and father who uses an electric wheelchair. We've had endless delays.

We've had a year delay because and I just heard it will be

delayed again.

It should be completed in 2020. I'm hearing rumors it will be delayed.

This is critical infrastructure

and cars travel and it's an

unsafe street for my father to

cross and I'd like for him to join the city with us.

I carry the stroller down the

steps and we're all aware in new york city a woman lost her life

doing that with her child.

And sarah jones I think is the planning person.

And they led community meetings.

Please don't let this be delayed further.

>> Commissioner:   thank you for

coming down and thank your

daughter for coming down too and

remind people it affects folks

at all ages of the spectrum.

>> Clerk:   next speaker, please.

>> I asked you to investigate

broadband alarms for the right turn beeping the busses make and I want to thank you because I

got a call from the jacobs

company looking in to the

feasibility of broadband alarm to improving safety of vision

zero and for the significant noise pollution advantages. I appreciate that. In the meantime, there's been a

few busses in near my house that

are extremely lowd I -- loud all

above 63db and I was directed to an assistant to hopefully reach

out to engineering to lower the

D.B. On the busses and I've been

tracking them two months and

unfortunately some in the 70D.B.

But home are 95 D.B. And I'm a block away and it's the first thing I hear in the morning and

last thing I hear at night.

Setting off a 90 D.B. Alarm

start at 5:00 in the morning is

an intense thing.

Unfortunately, I also want to

say julia's report was great saying the number one complaint at night is noise.

They've been doing construction

on the vanness corridor three blocks from my house.

I here the dump truck beeping 10:00 to 1:00.

They could be solved by broadband alarm.

There's no way someone sleeping

three blocks away needs know it's back up five blocks away. If we're doing this in the

middle of the night we can solve this. They jack hammer 20 minutes but the beeping goes on for hours and hours. Thank you very much and please continue to support this and

this is a really important noise

pollution issue.

>> Commissioner:   thank you, next speaker, please.

>> Clerk:   austin peterson.

Ali vazbadahe. >> what's the percentage clipper

take when you take it on the muni bus, what's the percentage

they take for the fare?

>> Commissioner:   the way this

works is you can tell us what

you think but it's not an interactive process.

>> better muni equals better

taxis and better taxis equal better

better muni.

If there wasn't too much taxes take

taken from muni it would help. If they're in a hurry they see a

taxi and have a clipper card and

$20 and I can hop in the taxi real quick.

I'd like to be able to see the connect made between clipper and

the taxis and the muni. I think it will help.

And this would make the city

more attractive than the airport if they can depend on people flagging us constantly. That would make more taxis on the street if they had more ways to pay and it would be a

beautiful way to pay for the taxi.

Maybe taxis can help distribute.

I heard the other guy had trouble getting a clipper card.

Maybe if they had some handy we

could tell you the clipper card.

>> Commissioner:   and we understand the benefits of

taking the cash out of the taxi industry for the safety and for you all and other benefits thank

you for that suggestion.

Next speaker, please.

>> hi.

Ali vahabdaje thank you for the

valiant effort to pronounce the

name it's how was your day, vahabdaje.

I was the founder of chariot in san francisco in 2014 and the parent company for smart

mobility since the cessation of

services in san francisco and

beyond, so as a district 2 residents since coming back to

muni as a morning and evening

commuter, suffice to say the

capacity of chariot of the

passengers it transited every

weekday is now trying to find space on muni.

It is not a good look especially from the sorj side of the

city -- north side from russian hill where the vast majority of the several thousand customers

came from.

I've approached supervisor

stefani about this issue and I

want to ask the board and the executive leadership how they

plan to make up for that

capacity constraint. Several times in the past three

weeks I haven't been able to get

on the bus I hope you can figure

out how to have alternative cap space so people can use it.

>> Commissioner:   thank you. Any other speakers on public

comment? Seeing none we'll close item 9

and move to item 10.

>> Clerk:   the consent I'm -- item. I've not received a request any item be severed.

>> Commissioner:   does anybody want to sever an item. We have a motion. All in favor say aye.

Opposed?

Item 11, Ms. Boomer.

>> Clerk:   thunder showering the director to implement parking and traffic modifications along the third street between king and mission streets south of market as part of the third

street transit and safety

project. >> I'm the project manage for

the third street and muni 4 project I bring to you.

Today is part of our 90-day

action plan julia was talking about and a vision zero

supporting project. So just to be clear the project is focussed on the part of third

street and south of market.

Not third street further south.

On third street and soma we have the 30 and 45. As you probably know, these

routes are -- serve various destinations and have nearly 70,000 riders. On third street a bus is

scheduled to arrive never 90 to

120 seconds on average during rush hour.

They'll continue to be high vol

even after the subway is opened

by candle stick and express busses.

You May think don't we already

have a transit line we do but they're blocked and busses are delayed during rush hour you see a typical condition right here.

What is happening there is the transit lane is being used as a second right turn lane.

You May recognize this is folsom

street and it happens regularly there as well as bryant street and the busses will get out and go around traffic which is a

time consuming process. As a result we're seeing average travel times of 10 minutes from caltrain to market.

That's about a mile.

That's about 6 or 7 miles an hour and the proposal is

focussed where the bus 40%

slower than after 7:00 P.M.

So I don't know if you can

squint and see this. I apologize the map is a little bit small. The source of the problem we have in the afternoon with

transit is third street is a

route to the bay bridge. You see the opportunities going to the one-way street at this point. There's opportunities to turn right towards the bridge at bryant and then again at harrison and folsom. We see high volumes of right-turn vehicles at all those elections.

At bryant, about 20% of the 2,000 vehicles heading north in

the busiest hour are trying to turn right. If you do quick math that's

about 400 vehicles in an hour

that say high -- is a high

volume of right-turning vehicles.

In addition to transit, it's

been equally important in pedestrian safety.

South of market is the rapidly growing area with rapidly increasing numbers of pedestrians.

Third street is a very wide

one-way street which appoints up

to six lanes of traffic going in

one direction and this is a high injury corridor and the most recent period for which we had

data on third street we found a

total of 50 pet and bike collisions. That's almost within per month

and two fatalities among those. I want to talk for a moment about our community engagement

process.

We did have an extensive outreach efforts and held two

dozen stakeholder meetings with advocacy organizations, institutional stakeholders, residents of senior communities

to take -- make up a large

portion in the corridor and councils an supervisor for

districts 3 and 6. Most of the corridor in district

6 but many passengers continuing

to district 3 .

We conducted survey for pedestrians and motorists and

tried to find out more about

merchants' loading needs and

befavors and had an open house

which we had about 75 to 100 participants.

We sent out thousands of multi-lingual informational

mailers in advance and e-mail updates to about 4,000 people

and the project website.

You can see some comments up here. I would say in general there was an understanding of the need for the project and I think overall

there was an agreement with the proposed solutions. That's not to say we didn't air some concerns.

We heard concerns about traffic,

about loading for some small businesses along third street. About bus stops because we do have proposals for changes to bus stops and I'll talk about those as well as accommodations

for bicycles and enforcement and various other issues. We did refine the project based

on some of what we heard.

Notably we did work to maintain

three lanes of traffic from king to market during rush hours and extend the hours when

restrictions are in effect acknowledging traffic has grown

and that provides additional traffic capacity around the

shoulders of the peak when we see transit delay.

We didn't remove loading spaces. That's not to say some wouldn't be relocated.

They'd either be on the same block face or immediately around the corner. And I'll talk more about bus

stops and bikes in a moment.

So here you can see some turn and we'll get into drawings but

some of our proposed solutions.

Probably the biggest move we're proposing to make is to shift that existing transit lane one lane to the left.

So right now it's mostly in the second lane from the curb and the lane to the right serves as

a parking and loading lane most

of the day on most blocks and

becomes in places a right-turn lane.

We effectively have a dual-turn

lane happening and we want to move it to the middle of the segment to the third lane from

the curb and that would be

between brandon and folsom.

Just about half a mile.

We're also going to remove one

stop I'd talk about but the 10 minute travel time from kal

train to market we believe we

can improve in the afternoon by 10 minutes per trip. If you look at the number of

riders we have up to 10,000 on busses heading north out of mission. That will be a significant

improvement in the aggregate. So a bit more detail on what

we're proposing.

I apologize if you have to squint.

At bryant and folsom where we

propose to have stops and they

could be very large.

Long enough for two 60-foot busses to use simultaneously and from the perspective of passengers very wide. They'd be on sidewalks and the

sidewalk would be about 24 feet wide.

That's up from 10 feet today.

If you think those are 130 feet

long that's a large sidewalk space we're creating. Also at bryant and folsom we

want to restore two crosswalks where he want to separate all the pedestrian movements from vehicle movement.

We'd have a right-turn only signal phase for the motorists. The rest of the time we'd have a

no right on red restriction.

And I used to live in the corridor and was unfortunate to

walk to work but walked through third and folsom every day and

if you're out in the morning or

afternoon you know the jostling

between vehicles trying to turn

right and the crosswalk is scary.

We greatly reduce it, if not eliminate that. For the distance of three blocks

we'd look to shift some traffic capacity in the through lanes to

the right turn lanes and extend

the hours from 9:00 A.M. To

10:00 A.M. And in the afternoon

from 3:00 P.M. To 7:00 P.M. And we'll also ex continued our

signal cycle length to buy us

traffic community and do

right-turn signal phase.

When we did traffic modelling we

found not much changed today and they don't function very well for vehicles in the peak but we

don't believe they'll get meaningfully worse.

To make room for right-turn lanes a key part of the proposal and other parts of the proposal we're looking to remove a total

of 23 parking spaces along the entire length and that includes

18 on third street itself as

well as five more on cross streets.

Loading spaces would all be

relocated in the immediate haven't.

Bike lanes, currently there's

not one on third street and not planning to add one.

We're currently constructing a

high-quality bicycle facility on

ninth street protected by like lines and another on fifth

street in development we're looking at opportunities to improve bicycle conditions there as well and it would all be part

of a north-south and east-west grid we're trying to develop south of market.

I talked about moving bus stops around. Always a controversial subject.

What we're proposing to do is go for five bus stops in the segment to four.

Currently we have a very odd legacy pattern that for all I

know goes back to 1920 when street cars were operating. In one location we have a third

of a mile between stops from townsend to harrison.

That's a stop only at harrison temporarily.

Previously it was under the freeway and not a great waiting

environment for passengers and

it was 1500, to 1600 street between stops and conversely we have two on the same stop between folsom and howard and

they're about 500 feet apart.

So we propose two things.

Remove the stop at howard with

less usage the sidewalk is level.

We feel as far as removing stops go it's a fairly minimal impact and would like to take the stop

at harrison and move to it bryant.

The result of that which is hard

to see with the closed

captioning is a stop every other

block which are 1200 feet part

or so within our stop guidelines.

So this is a brief summary of the legislation you're being

asked to approve.

parking and traffic changes. It doesn't include a couple important components. One is moving an existing transit lane you do not actually

need to approve the other is the

sidewalk extensions and 42

two -- the two for bus stops and those are the purview of public works.

Now, separate from the project

but related to it I want to talk

for a moment about an effort in transit planning and engineering

over the last few weeks and months to take a closer look at potential impacts on the muni

vehicles from non-muni vehicles

legally allowed in our transit lanes. We're going collect data and

looking at corridors such as

gary, 16th street where we have non muni vehicles allowed to use the lane and third street.

It's hard to look at third street now.

Nobody uses the transit lane.

The transit lane is not functional.

I've stood there many hours

waiting for a non-muni vehicle to come along and they don't because they don't need to gain

access to our stops which is the

primary reason our bus in that lane so they travel in the through lanes which are more

free flowing during the peak. So following completion of

construction, if the project proceeds, we'd like to take a

look at how the lane is functioning and whether there's delay.

I will tell you we've done preliminary data collection on third and have an idea of the

number of vehicles out there. We don't believe there should be a problem but we're going to do

a study to try to confirm this. Again, we'll look at different locations because we believe if there are effects they'll vary

by location. There's different context you find for transit lanes around

the city. Here's the project time line and

hoping to vit complete early fall.

The early implementation would include moving the transit lane

and stops and the pedestrian improvements. As a temporary measure at folsom

and bryant rather than having a

sidewalk extension we'd have

boarding islands you see

regularly now in soma and a relatively channel not wide

enough for a vehicle except for

street sweepers. Construction should take one to

two months. Depending on timing it May

overlap in soma with the giants and warrior season.

There's never a perfect time but

we believe we can limit the impact. Construction taking place

primarily on the midday or

weekends and weekends and that completes the presentation.

Thank you very much.

>> Commissioner:   any question. >> thank you.

I do see third street right-turning cars is an impediment.

I hope this will speed it up a lot. First, thank you for the community engagement.

I know we've made really good

progress in our ability to engage with the community and get great feedback. i think staff is doing a really good job on that.

Better than a lot of cities and companies.

Amazon has proved that in new

york where they walked up and

away win community pushback. Thank you for the community engagement. Tell me how it will be better for the bus operators.

I promised myself we would

always get -- ask that question after driving myself.

>> we actually have coaches coming out of three or four

different locations.

We've gone around. And they love it when they don't

have to pull into traffic and out of traffic.

Right away we got off on a good foot talking about that. Those who have been driving on

third for a while take it as a

fact of life the transit lane is

going to be useless between 3:00 and 7:00 in the afternoon in the current location.

Right away we started talking about moving the transit lane

and right turn activity and

what's happening at bryant and folsom and they reacted. We got a positive response from the operators. >> thank you.

I know this does not include

bike lanes and we heard people

do want bike lanes. There's good a good bike

facility on second and fifth street. I'm concerned now hearing about

the boarding islands it's going have a channel between the

boarding island and sidewalk and you know the sidewalks will

assume it's for them.

>> it won't be marked as a bake

line and -- bike lane.

And like I said, I've spent a

lot of time on the street watching how it work and when

you see a cyclist more often

than not they're in the bike lane.

And we'll have all the right-turning traffic to the right of the transit lane and the traffic moving through to the left of the transit lane and

we hope that it is relatively free flowing.

Of course we'll still have some violators no matter what. It's not something we want to encourage but I want to imagine most likely when you do see bikes you'll probably see them in the red lane.

For them to veer around behind the transit island and come back out probably wouldn't make a lot of sense. >> good. Thank you. No more questions. Thank you.

>> I have a quick question. As I understand it, there's

going to be transit boarding islands in the interim and later

we'll do the bulbs, is that right?

>> that's right.

>> Commissioner:   can you walk us through our people in wheelchairs will access the

curbs to transit?

>> we'll have ramps.

They're quite long, about 130, 135 feet depending on the exact location. Thane situation we want to have ramps at both ends.

We sat down with accessibility

and walked through this the

islands will be nine-feet wide and that's enough to have the

ramp at either end and have

space for people in mobility

devices and turn and not get caught in a pinch point and we have shelters and still have

room for the lifts to deploy.

I think the key thing to understand is the facilities were designed in collaboration with our accessibility folks.

>> thank you.

>> Commissioner:   director eaken.

>> have a big question and some

detail questions. In the big picture I understand it's about pedestrian safety and traffic improvements.

As you mentioned it's a wide street with many lanes going in

one direction which is an antiquated mode of street design that harkens back to a different

era of transportation.

I just wonder more broadly, I appreciate all the improvements and I think they're all well

thought through. I weekender are we thinking through for the vision of soma

street as we see more and more residential and office development how the streets

should function and whether the

one-way, six-lane streets are really in sync with where we are

as a city or whether we ought to

be rethinking the way the

streets look adding safer,

protective phasing, which I'm happy to see will be added to

the project.

>> you're right, the streets in

soma reflect what I think all of

us think about streets and the place at which we're seeing the

city land use and transportation

patterns and city change more raply than anywhere else.

This board has legislated

protected guidelines on 2nd,

folsom and howard and major transformation at the east and

hopefully today a change to 3rd street.

We're trying to undo the way of thinking of market street.

Asked if there was a framework?

I believe we talked just at a

strategic level how you can't

put a world-class transit

facility or parking protected bike lane an every street in

soma but we're mindful of having

row bust -- robust networks so

cyclists can get from midmarket

to the embarcadero and folsom.

We'd be happy to dust that off

and share that with you.

>> Commissioner:   thank you.

On the project itself, two quick questions, one is the idea again

to create a more less intimidating more friendly pedestrian environment.

The concept of mid-block

crossings is not ending up in the final design and wonder if

you can speak to that and the photos you showed of all the

cars lined up in the red lane in the current situation suggest to

me we May have an enforcement

challenge with the abuse of the current lane.

Moving it is a traffic move but

I wondered if you thought about enforcement so it doesn't continue?

>> regarding the block

crossings, I'll take the

opportunity to point out the crosswalking lags we're proposing crosswalks on all the cross streets who don't currently have crosswalks.

Some are alleyways, more are

minor streets that intersect

with 3rd.

We haven't looked at additional mid-block crossings we have one

at perry under the freeway and

one that connects to the yerba buena gardens and there's one at south park.

That's a location we see major

vehicle queueing at bryant.

That box-blocking issue with pedestrian conflicts would be

hard to address under current

traffic conditions at that location. Also, it's not a street that crosses third.

It just intersections third and

from a geometric perspective there's less urgency than there otherwise would be.

Regarding enforcement, my task

as a project manager and my team

I worked with and we look at design and we have an

enforcement effort that take place every afternoon all over

the city and P.C.O.S are helpful but we don't want to rely on them too much.

>> Commissioner:   anything else,

directors?

Very good.

This is an action item so we

will go to public comment.

>> good afternoon, chair heinicke and board members. I'll the policy and program lead

with walk san francisco. We're pleased with the project.

Five of the munis go down the corridor and pedestrians use them and people who walk.

All transit riders are pedestrians.

This project includes great pedestrian safety features and

we heard 20 feet of sidewalk extension where you don't have

to intersect with people waiting

for bus and have you more space. Newly-opened crosswalks.

These are huge.

Crossing folsom strong cross twice to get to the side you

want is a huge safety improvements and pedestrians

will have increased time to

cross with new improvements and it will increase the safety of

those who walk and help us reach vision zero. Thank you, sfmta staff.

>> Commissioner: next speaker, please. >> this is my first time giving public comment to exciting to be out here.

I got to hear from steve and the

rest of the planners at the sf

moma meeting and while there's exciting things happen and a user of transit in the corridor, I think we're having a short-sighted approach. I wanted to highlight a few

things.

First, I'm someone featured in the slide deck that lives there

and a do not drive. Many people in that area have that kind of a lifestyle.

I see this set of changes going to cause problems to me as a

pedestrian and cyclist.

Cars are already using the

transit lane and we have a problem of cars going across the

intersection and getting backed up. There's a hard limit to the cars on the freeway and we're not solving that by an extra lane of transit.

I think we'll run into problems with induced demand.

We're creating an extra lane and saying just because you're moving in this direction and we

have cars, we're going to create an incentive for cars to use

this and I think that's the wrong direct for thirty street

and soma for the sake of pedestrians and alternative

transit.

I'm someone who will ride in the red lane but I've been forced

out and back into it by

dangerously driving card.

>> Commissioner:   thank you very

much. Next speaker, please.

>> I walk and take my bike on

3rd street and it's not safe now

and would like to ask you to

approve the changes because as it's put together right now it's making it worse.

Third street is a critical bike link for a lot of people. It's the most direct way to get

to market street from caltrain

and job centers and there'll be more development in the central soma plan.

This is a place people want to go in that direction on bikes,

on scooters and it's not safe.

I think any plan we consider for third street should be making

that safer not less safe. I have a visual you'd like to

display.

This is from the website and it shows a bicyclist and do that person look safe to you?

They don't to me.

You don't think it's right to

say they should go out of their way and most people in that

situation will use a ride hail app which we probably don't want

to encourage or they'll do what

I've done and risk their life riding on 3rd street anyway. The kind of change I'd like to

see on 3rd street is consider

get protected bike lane on the left side is one possible solution and not do the changes

that would add a double-right-turn lane because

they can be very dangerous for bicyclists and pedestrians and I'm worried someone will die on the street.

>> Commissioner:   thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> Clerk:   charles whitfield and

the last person who has turned in a speaker card.

>> good afternoon. Directors. I'm charles whitfield.

I'm a bus rider, walker, runner

and bike share user.

First I'll is an I'm happy to

see the sidewalk widening and

however as a psych lift third street's terrible as scott mentioned. It's just not safe and not usable at all.

It's disappointing the sfmta's response is to use another street. Thousands of people live and work on third street.

Thousands more come with the

central soma plan saying not use

the thurro fare you live and work on and I'm concerned with

the double-right turn lanes like

the ones proposed at folsom because it means I'll have two lanes worth of drivers rather than one accelerating into a right turn because they missed their green arrow.

As you saw in the photo from the

initial presentation, right

turners routinely wind up around

the crosswalk and I strongly

believe the sfmta should not extend resources to use private cars in the city. This feels like a decision that

buys into car centric logic. Give them one more lane and it will solve the problem.

It seems the de facto lane would

become a de facto double lane. The congestion on third say function of the bay bridge. An additional right-turn lane won't make a difference. That same lane worth of space could make a huge difference to

the safety of pedestrians or bicyclists. Please consider promoting pedestrian use instead of

continuing to accommodate ever larger numberers of dangerous and environmentally destructive cars.

>> Commissioner:   thank you very much.

>> Clerk:   eilis rodgers and one more person.

>> I'm ellis rodgers President

Of the mission bay neighborhood association sometimes called alphabet soup. We generally support the project. We do appreciate the outreach

that has been done but I have two disappointments in addition to the bike lanes.

When I talked to the project

manager he said it was not about

intersection management.

In this area we need to deal

with intersection management.

This project just stacks cars neatly.

It helps but I doesn't solve the problem. We've been advocating as a neighborhood association for

eight years now.

And we want PCOs to solve the

block in the box of controlled

chaos between bikes and cars at intersections.

Please, at some point can we start addressing intersection management.

Thank you. >>

>> thank you very much.

Next speaker, please.

>> good afternoon and directors I'm the executive director of

the city's grassroot advocate

for accessible and affordable

and always growing public transit.

I'm in support 3rd street proposal and tens of thousands

of riders use it every day and

personally I use 3rd street

often and it's an everyday

occurrence to see them blocked. So we're thrilled this moves the

transit only lanes to a center

lane and build accessible island.

We've been vocal with our

concerns with private vehicles

using transit-only lanes but thanks to the your direction and

the planning team you'll looking into how they're impacting muni so thank you for that. I do want to echo some of the concerns we heard today and

we're hearing this a lot on

social media today in relation to the double right at folsom there's concerns with this being

an issue with pedestrian safety

and cyclist safety.

I would ask for the team to look

at the double-lane and if away

want to build it hit but we're

hoping you approve the proposal.

>> Commissioner:   thank you very much. Any further speakers. Seeing none we'll close public

comment and open it up for directors comments if there is

any.

And I want it ensure they add an

additional lane of people and

how do we -- and people don't

abide for these or what the rules happen to be?

>> in providing a lane configuration that respond those

current activity, my belief and judgment from my years doing

this is that that will mostly solve that problem through design.

Now, I won't lie to you we'll still get violators.

People get frustrate the queues

and they engage in dangerous behaviors and they turn around

the boarding island from 3rd street and I cringe when I see it but it happens.

I don't know we can eliminate that behavior.

I don't agree provide second

turn lane will encourage a de facto triple right-turn lane because the geometry doesn't lend itself to that. I also think it's important to

understand we would not be proceeding if we weren't taking extra measures to protect pedestrians and in our view to improve pedestrian safety.

Does that help to answer? And you have less conflicts and most are going to the bay bridge. Was that considered and if not,

why not? The central soma plan envisioned

a one-way cycle track and envisioned moving the turn lanes

and widening the sidewalks.

The cost would be displacement

of loading or traffic lanes and

in tracts -- we were able to

talk to merchants on three or

four separate occasions an managed to get hold of people. There's little off-loading for small businesses.

What I heard is they rely heavily on the curb-side loading.

It's well used.

Auto auto aa-and we can get rid

of a lane of and on the have a

bike lane you're looking at the impact. >> there's no way to do a

floating lane or the old way of a lane next to the load

>> ing? >> you could if you're pushing on the right side we're trying

to get our transit lane out of

the chaos near the corner.

Pretty soon you'd meet in the middle it's a question of what

do you warrant to prioritize what do you want to prioritize in the context?

>> I don't know how bad it is along 3rd street.

Maybe it's part of a larger

question and fundamentally

that's where it's all going.

I know there's other hov-only

lane and I don't know -- it's a

less pedestrian business frequented way

>> you see 400 cars going right

at bryant it's because they're

heading the hov line east of 2nd.

>> I can't think the lane goes

to bryant and you avoid turning onto 3rd if you go up bryant to hit the hov lane.

>> if you're coming up bryant they cross over 3rd.

And you see traffic coming from

further south on mission bay and it's growing even with all the investment we're making and great transit facilities growing

traffic demand out of mission bay.

If you think of how you get from 280 over to the bay bridge, a lot of them will get off at king

and then you have actually triple-left-turn lane from king

to 3rd and 3rd to the right lane

opportunities to access the bay bridge. >> I'm trying to think of other

ways to refunnel the traffic. I think the takeaway is we'd love to figure out how to better manage that situation.

>> absolutely.

>> Commissioner:   Mr. Brinkman. >> I intend to support this and see where you're going vice

chair borden and where supervisor eaken is going and we need a way to turn off the tap

of the cars.

Thankfully the T.A. Is studying

that until we can turn the tap

down on the cars we have to

manage the flow of and that's what we need and want.

I love the idea of a west side

bike lane because when you look

at the map 3rd street leads to kearny and that's a fantastic route for all the bikes trying to get across town.

I intend to support this and I think you've done great work and it will help transit and pedestrians but at this point will not help cyclists. I know this could be a great route for cycling. It's not going happen in this iteration but there's nothing in

this iteration that precludes that from happening in the future, is there?

>> that's correct.

You'd need to modify those.

Those ray relatively minor expense.

And I would not be remotely surprised if one of those are back before you talking about

more changes to 3rd street. >> everybody's commented they

want this, that, more and if,

and but we need this for the

transit improvement and

pedestrian safety up --

improvements an more.

We need congestion charging and some are hov vehicles because looking at the cars in downtown san francisco most are at 20% capacity with a driver and nobody else at least some are

hov. >> thank you for the work you've done on this and we'll probably be back for more on 3rd street I'm sure.

>> Commissioner:   we have a motion and I'll ask for a second

and won't cut off discussion. We have a second.

Is there further discussion? Mrs. Rubke.

>> one of the public speakers mentioned intersection management. This is my neighborhood too so I know what she's talking about and understand the challenges but could you talk a little bit

about that. If you have plans it goes down

the project itself.

>> south of market in particular

on the bridge on ramps in the afternoon is the heaviest deployment we have of parking

control officers.

We have as you heard because

we're great at controlling the unpredictable movements around portal the same applies south of market. We don't have as many as we'd

like. And every intersection downtown

at a traffic cop can't quite get to the staffing level but I hear

the comments and I know she's

been vocal and persistent and

clear we need to control the on ramps and I'm hoping we can provide a better level of

staffing at 3rd and bryant and

other intersections that are a

big concern.

>> it is the most direct route

from caltrain to downtown.

I hear that myself and I brave

that route.

And we hear people say this is great and just a question in

terms of the fees

asibility of

coming back in the future and

adding bike lanes.

Is there a reason it's more cost effective. Looking at brannon street which

is next on the agenda which is a lower-cost item to add in the bike lanes.

Is there a reason why there'd make more sense to add bike lanes now or as of the effectively later on?

>> I apologize in advance for

this without my planner designing the facility it's hard to say what the cost would be.

In general, and this will sound silly but probably less so to

you than others, $14 million is relatively an inexpensive project for us.

We're not pouring a lot of

concrete and that allows us to

build faster and cheaper.

Could you stripe and put in a facility, a version exists.

Whether you want a concrete barriers between parking and

traffic lanes and the bike

facility is a cost element you'd

have to factor in that is more

significant than restriping.

You also quickly will get into signalling issues in that

situation which is an expense a lot of people don't realize.

We're replacing a lot of the signals but if you were introducing the added factor of

bike signal particularly two-way cycle facility on the one-way

street you're talking about a bike-only signals and it involves more hardware at this

point. There's a bike project as part

of a relatively low-cost project I'm not sure it's the project

people are talking about.

>> Commissioner:   anything further if not we have a motion and second.

All in favor please say aye. >> aye. >> anyone opposed? That passes. Thank you very much.

Congratulations. Move forward.

>> Clerk:   item 12, approving traffic and modifications along

brannon street and between delancy street and 8th street

associate with the brannan

street safety project. >> good afternoon.

I'm cameron beck in the subdivision and bringing you a proposal to improve safety on

brannan street. Brannon vete is highlighted in

yellow and the above map of soma.

The majoritiship -- majority is

on the vision zero between 2nd street down it 8th street.

The whole corridor from the embarcadero to division street

about a mile and a half is undergoing infrastructure

upgrades prompt a san francisco

public works repaving project.

So sfmta decided to take advantage of the paving project to design a safer brannan street.

The goals are prome air will focussed on -- primarily

focussed on safety for all users

and the projects anticipated

along the cot -- corridor and

this shows the typical

configuration and two lanes in each direction and parking on

both sides.

So one very effective roadway safety treatment is to reduce travel lanes from four to three.

This is typically called a road diet.

It opens up space to stripe a

dedicated bike lane.

It shows the configuration with

one lane in each direction separate a center lane and bike lanes would be installed in both directions an parking would remain on both sides.

We will also use a suite of intersection treatment including

upgrading to high visibility continental crosswalks and keep

vehicles from encroaching in the crosswalks and daylighting at

crosswalks for better visibility.

Traffic signals will include head starts and signalling

timing will be updated given

today's transportation demand.

>> -- to dive deeper into the

road diets are an effective way

to reach the city's vision zero

goals by reducing collisions

overall as well as reducing crash severity.

An stall road diet clarify the roadway lanes so intersections

are better managed and safer. At the intersection there will still be two lanes as there are today. The difference is the left lane

will be a dedicated left-turn lane.

This eliminates the stress and last-minute maneuvering you experience today if you're attempting to go straight through but the driver in front

of you decides to wait to make a

left turn.

Road diets also reduce speeding

when some vehicles go over the

25 mile-an-hour speed limit and

the reducing the speed limit

increases the chance of

survivability in thecation --

in the case of accidents and

make safer turns.

This as a result of neighborhood meetings and we added commercial loading zones for the corridor,

some parking will be removed along the corridor making room

for turn pockets and better intersection visibility and 75%

of the parking spaces will be retained.

Some were concerned with the

traffic adjustment we also heard about traffic enforcement.

We shared the concerns with the enforcement counterparts and

we're adding right-turn pockets

to help address the concerns.

Pinterest global headquarters

occupies three separate offices

between 4th and 8th street and

their employees often commute by

foot or bike and typically walk between the various sites. They support the safety improvements proposed in the

project and are committed to

advocating for safety of their

neighbors as well.

They anticipate the repaving to

be done and the configuration

would be activated during the summer and thank you for your time and I'd be happy to respond

to questions.

>> Commissioner:   are there any

questions for cameron on this proposal? >> yes. Thank you, good presentation.

I see from the project plans wedge

between 8th street it's a

parking protected bike line.

>> I was home we'd have the

closed captioning up here to sound you made.

Between 7th and 8th we have a

parking protected bike lane. Is that blocked because it's

then connecting to the 8th street and 7th street bike route because the first question for everybody's going to be why is

the entire project not a parking protected bike infrastructure? >> yes, specifically between 7th

and 8th, I put up the project

plans on the overhead.

I'll call that westbound.

This came out of the outreach directly on the block. The north side of the street is

airbnb's headquarters. They partner with ride-hailing

companies to provide commute

subsidies for their employees. So we already know there's a

high percentage of ride hailing

and drop offs and pick ups at the corner. The south side of the street

where you see the mid block outs the street narrow so we were

able to add in the protected

bike lane knowing there's be intensified pick up.

>> there's nothing that precludes in the future this

street getting a more up-to-date

parking protected, bike lane in the future. >> there's nothing and in fact

the central soma plan highlights

brannan as one of the streets in that plan for further

improvement. >> this is the first nibble at the street. Thank you.

>> any other questions? If not I'll call for public

comment on this?

hold on public comment for a moment.

Commission eaken you had a comment? >> that's exactly the right question. We know there are conflicts at

the one intersection but I would

imagine there's T.N.T. Conflicts

in terms of future projects

there May arrive T.N.T. Or other

vehicle conflicts on the other sections.

I just wonder if low-cost improvements have been

contemplated to mitigate the conflicts before they arise?

>> yes. We're adding more loading zones

and the existing zones in front

of some of the buildings along

the corridor those are something

we're cognizant of and can add more loading space.

One block of the project area doesn't have parking meters so they're a great way to manage the parking and loading so we'll be proposing to add meters at

the one block.

>> have we contemplated the boarding island much like we're doing on valencia street where we have the boarding island because of the school.

Have we contemplated more

islands that are not necessarily

associated with transit? >> no.

This is an issue where we want

to build protected bike lanes

and if we can figure out for

drop offs and pick ups for boarding islands it would be

better because people can get

there and wait and it's a discernible place to say this is where I am. That's another challenge we have

with the loading and unloading

of T.N.T.S. They stop wildfire hay think the person is -- they think the

person is and if we built these islands they would serve well for all kinds of pick ups and

drop offs and for helping the drivers identify where to drop

people off and pick them up opposed to all over the place

they do now. >> I would say this project

tries to get at that by looking

at zones and times and places an

extensions as we do more

protected bike lanes we May see more island configurations but

as we look to how to manage the curb and how some use of the

curb is evolving from storing a single vehicle to more pick up and drop off, this is all part of what we're looking at about

how to change the way we manage the curb to accommodate that change and use of the curb.

>> separately, if we could maybe bring that to the board some

time to talk more holistically

about that because I know there

are other contemplations for small business so let's talk

about it. >> to your point, vice chair borden the valencia street

protected islands with bording islands for school drop offs serve exactly what you're talking about.

I know staff was interested in

watching how they'd perform.

You're right, that could be a good --

>> Commissioner:   okay. Now public comment. My apologies.

>> Clerk:   natasha alfonzo and

christen lackey and christen rodgers.

>> Commissioner:   welcome back. >> hello.

I'm nasa ta sha alfonzo and the

project is a follow the paving

project which means the sfmta makes sure simple safety

improvements could be installed.

This inter-agency communication

and coordination is not a

standard practice and we wanted to recognize the city for doing that and thank them.

It gives us quick action to reach vision zero so thank you again. The project includes important

safety features including fewer

vehicle lanes to cross and safer intersections an more time to

cross. While they're all important, the project does not create a street

that's safe for pedestrians the

lack of mid-block crossings pose as a threat.

It's known for long blocks and

alleyways that's why it

identified long blocks and

alleys that intersect the street

people cross mid block and it's legal at most but it doesn't mean it's safe and it's the city's job to ensure safety. While this phase doesn't include the crossings we urge the city

to prioritize the creation of

the crossings along brannan and many community members are asking for this so we need to you meet our safety of needs when walking.

>> Commissioner:   thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

>> Clerk:   kristin lackey.

Alice rodgers. >> good afternoon, directors. I'm a community organizer on

staff at the san francisco bicycle coalition.

I'm here on behalf of our 10,000 members to speak in support of

the project.

Currently brannan is a large employment center and connects

8th, 7th, 2nd and soon 5th it's

a candidate for new bicycle infrastructure. This project while not the highest quality of bike infrastructure it's a step in

the right direction.

At the core the road diet will make it safer for all modes

including motorists and product

the protected lanes and the mixing zones leave a lot to be desired and encourage staff to continue to work to make the hot spots safer.

To be clear it will be a bike lane for confident riders only while newer riders will have to

pre main on the protect -- remain to the protected bake line.

Thank you for your work. As more people start riding on brannan we look forward to bring

class 4 protected bike lanes to the whole corridor. Thank you.

>> Clerk:   alice rodgers.

>> good afternoon again, commissioners. I live on south park and I

mostly want to echo what walk san francisco natasha had said.

Note this is a project called

safer brannan not safe brannan. I very much appreciate

commissioner eaken's comments about mid block crossings.

These are important.

As the project manager mroet

noted it allows -- noted it

allows for high speed and it's

important the one on jack lennon, there are two new buildings there.

We're not going to be getting

new high rises so the central

soma plan will not be generating

money in that area.

So we desperately need crossings. There are people crossing for

lunch at south park, kids, we

have an increasingly aged

community in the S.R.O.S in the

south park.

"understand it can't be part and parcel of this plymouth project

but hope you'll find a way soon

to give real attention to the

mid block crossings and the development has already happened if you can spotlight the funding.

>> Commissioner:   thank you very much. Any further speakers? Seeing none we'll close public comment. Directors, if there's any

comments, please make them now otherwise I'll entertain a motion. >> motion to approve.

>> Commissioner:   second? >> >> second.

>> Commissioner:   all in favor please say aye. >> aye.

>> Commissioner:   any opposed? All right.

Mr. Beck, the same direction to

you, onward and upward. Congratulations an thank you.

>> Clerk:   item 13 authorizing

the director to approve modification modification modification

modification

modification number 93 to

contract number 1300 third street light rail program phase

2 central subway stations

surface tract and system with

the contracts of 1266-1 and

1266-2 with thales transport and

security from tpc back to the

sfmta and tncs design equipment procurement and operations start

up and testing amend the definition for substantial

completion for contract 1300 to

relief tpc responsibility and

atcs operations start-up and testing and reduce the amount of

contract 1300 by $18,036,709.

>> I'm albert ho the acting

program manager. Roberta just stole most my thunder. I'm here for a contract

modification to construction

contract with tutor perini for work control.

It was contemplated in 2014 when

train control was actually

awarded by this board and subsequently by to the board of

supervisors to basically get

design, procurement and installation and start and

testing of train control within the central program.

That work was awarded to the

central subway and reassigned

back to the contractor tutor por

por -- perini.

We're requesting for approval

for delete a portion of that

work and the testing and elements and the contact will

still maintain the installation

of the equipment and then in

doing so we'll want to re-assign

it back to sfmta and central

subway to have better management

of the activities. Part of the reason we're doing this is because based on the

reassignment of the work for the last several years we've had

some issues in terms of coordination between ourselves,

train control and tutor perini

contract where it's impacting

our schedule and service delivery.

By taking on this we're hoping to mitigate that element of work. We're asking basically to allow

us to then take over and reassign this work back to the agency itself. With that, I'm willing to take any questions.

>> Commissioner:   okay.

Any questions for Mr. Ho?

>> Clerk:   Mr. Chair there, is no public comment.

No member of the public has submitted a speaker card.

>> Commissioner:   we'll close public comment and given you've had your thunder stolen and

answered all of you're questions

in one fell swoop, I'll entertain a motion on this item. >> motion to approve.

>> Commissioner:   is there a second? >> second.

>> Commissioner:   all in favor

please say aye. Opposed?

Thank you very much, albert.

>> Clerk:   item 14 discussion and

vote pursuant to administrative

code section to move to closed section.

>> Commissioner:   is there a motion? >> second.

>> Commissioner:   all those in favor.

We'll move into closed session.

Fellow directors. >> okay. I want all of san francisco to

hear us, so louder. >> all right. We want to first off welcome

our mayor, the mayor of san

francisco, mayor london breed. [Applause]

>> we've got to check this out.

>> The Hon. London Breed:   the pressure.

[Speaking foreign language] [Applause]

>> The Hon. London Breed:   I am so excited to be the mayor of

such an incredible city, where we celebrate our diversity,

where we celebrate our culture,

where we focus in on really important opportunities to

really engage with our families and our communities.

Lunar new year is that celebration, which really highlights the importance of

family, of coming together, of

community, and of

>> Clerk:   all right. Item 15. Item 16 appropriate for motion

to disclose or not disclose information discussed.

>> not disclose.

>> Commissioner:   is there a second? >> second.

>> Commissioner:   all in favor, please say aye.

We will not disclose the

contents of that closed session.

>> Clerk:   that concludes the

business before us today.

>> Commissioner:   thank you very much, fellow directors.