secretary boomer: [reading roll] we are very pleased to have director heinicke back. congratulations. director heinicke: i had a nice long lunch. i had to be sworn in, and that was taking care of on thursday. vice chairman brinkman: so the next minute it? -- minutes? secretary boomer: you have a quorum. anyone who cannot comply might

be asked to leave the room. item number 4, the approval of the minutes from may 1, 2012. vice chairman brinkman: all in favor? secretary boomer: identified, communications. item number 6. vice chairman brinkman: any others? a hit and run yesterday, those are really stark reminders to us that we still have a lot of work to do on pedestrian safety. it is easy to think of those as private tragedy is affecting only the families or the drivers involved, and again, the second one i am not even sure is recognized as a tragedy, but i

feel that we need to have the pedestrian safety task force back to the mta board or to policy and governance. chicago, i read, just adopted a goal of zero pedestrian fatalities by 2020, and we have some very ambitious goals, but they are really stepping it up, and they have developed a task force to examine each site where a pedestrian incident occurred to see what they can do, and it would be very interesting to see if we can do that, especially on that masonic one. i do not believe it covers that block, and that block is particularly bad. that trader joe's. we have all done something that was a bad judgment call and was something we should not do. thankfully, last weekend, we

both stopped. and this calculation or an error in judgment should not result in death. i really feel like we need to take a close look at what we need to do there. i do not know it speed was involved, but we do know that the speed limit on that stretch was 25 m.p.h.. i believe if that car was going 95 miles per hour, i think the chance of survival would have been over 90%, i am not sure, but i am asking for a pedestrian task force to sit down and take a look at that blocked in particular and involving the trader joe's and that. it also again calls out enforcement. if we had speed cameras around that, we would not have some in the speeding cars, and what incidents we have would be less fatal. the other thing i would like to bring up, i would like us to take a look at how we can prioritize transit and bicycle

traffic on the key connections from certain neighborhoods in the city to the downtown economic war, and to prioritize. my co-workers and i have recently switched with our morning coffee break and are now at another corner, and i was shocked to see how many bicycles are coming down, so i think especially with our bicycle share coming up, we need to do something to make sure that they are comfortable. and that is all. thank you. director along with director you were on a different one? >> i rode with mayor lee and

director reiskin, so thanks to leah and the coalition. very well done. two things that came to our attention, one is that the requested painting of the bike lane to make clear to pedestrians, particularly tourists that that is a biplane and not a link to be walking in our parking in, that sort of thing. we have had a very good example of that. the mayor himself was getting ready to ride and was walking across. he knew enough to get out of the way of the oncoming cyclists, but it is a good example of how that could be made more apparent. i realize there is a price tag associated with that and that

recreations and park wants us to, with a way to make that green, and we will probably like the same from them, but it is a relatively low price tag. i do not want to make tradeoffs yet, but i think that could be something where we could see if there is a collaborative way that we can find that. the of the thing that is noticeable is we got a good look at the area where there are going to be improvements, down there by baker street, and, indeed, as i was pointing out to our colleagues here, almost as if the bike coalition planned it, our chairman was sideswiped by a parent and child on their bike. i can assure you that is not why he is not here today. the rest of the ride was pretty impressive. all in all, tom gets the purple

heart for that, but, again, congratulations to the by coalition for a successful event. the other thing i want to bring up, and i am not sure if this is qualified as an unfinished business rather than ongoing business, but one of the things i asked the director to work with the staff to implement this sort of onboard communications, a projection for our metro riders, and that has been going very well. i have seen it implemented a few times. there have been delays and tunnels for various reasons, and if those persons, i will ask for a report on that, but it is my personal experience that the writers initiate it, and i would also say that we have the union president here. i would say that this is something the board is interested in. i think it is better for commuters and better for the operators, so i would tell you

personally that i look forward to working with you and meeting with you in the near future, but this is an issue where if there is an operator feedback, we would love to hear from our operators to make that better. vice chairman brinkman: thank you. thank you, director heinicke. next item? secretary boomer: item 7, the directors' report. director: good afternoon. just a few things. the bike to work numbers. we had a record number of bikes at van ness, nearly 1100 bikes just between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m., and during that period of time, even more exciting is of the eastbound traffic, 73% were people on bikes, said that

intersection during that period of time, we had that much room share with bicycles. the number of people arriving on the bike to work day increase in the last five years. 54% more bikes at that intersection then at our peak hour counter the previous month, so it was not just the kind of heavy ridership. and as you know, one of the ideas on bike to work day is to get more people converted to the idea of the pleasures of writings -- writing one's bike to work. -- riding one's bike to work. some of the 54% will make the jump, at least once or twice a week. moving on, we have been reporting on the progress on the

church project, and we have been kind of gearing up for the shutdown that is part of that project. they will start on memorial day weekend. at that intersection. we will be basically replacing the rails for that entire intersection. it is a very complex specialty piece of track with a lot of curves and switches. that will require a total of nine-day shutdown of the n-du dah -- n-judah, and this is not for that project alone, but we are dovetailed -- dovetailing it, including out further where we are doing some switch replacement. we are using this down time to get as much repair work done as we possibly can. it will be pretty significant.

very hard work on outreach and developing a substitute bus plan, we routing buses -- rerouting buses and traffic closures, and the previous shutdowns have largely gone very well. this includes the four-day week of memorial week, so that is much more significant. the good news is that this is a great investment for the immune system and for the neighborhood. this is not just replacement on the street. this being a critical step, we will have much better facilities for pedestrians and a safer environment, where we have got two trains, cars, very heavy bicycle and pedestrian traffic on one very small spot, so a little inconvenience.

some very good news from the recent us conference. every year, they have a competition. this was the 37th annual bus rodeo, and i am told this is like the world series for bus drivers, so the best of the best around the country in terms of bus drivers compete. there were 52 operators from the u.s. and canadian transit system, and one of our own sfmta operators, kevin, came in second place internationally, international second place winner. he currently works in the cable car division. i do not think he was doing the cable car for the competition, but he would have won that one. and this is his second appearance, taking first place

back in 2005, so we want to honor him. there is a lot of practice that goes into that and certainly a lot of skill. we want to congratulate kevin, and perhaps at a future meeting, we can get him here to congratulate him in person. a few meetings back, in closed session, the mta board approved our side of a settlement with the california public utilities commission rock -- regarding an investigation they launched a few years ago. very happy to report that that was approved i think last week. voted out. it was on the commission meeting consent calendar, which really kind of closes the door on the live investigation part of that process, and it is an agreement that we believe will increase public safety as well as settle

those disputes, so we think this is a very good path forward for us. we come out of it with a much more constructive relationship, and we will ultimately have a better, safer system. we agreed to go forward with a number of capital improvements, including be finishing of the project i just mentioned at church, replacing the track, and other places in the system, including the metro turnaround. there is the upgrade of 27 transit's signals across the system, replacement of communication cables as part of the control system, a few other miscellaneous things, but really the best thing that came out of it was working constructively with them to kind of proactively improve the system.

good investments, a good state of repair. and i wanted to just give a quick report on the transit effectiveness project. i think i would have mentioned this. we have just completed two months work of workshops, and i know that some of you attended some of them. we had 300 people attend, as well as feedback that we are receiving from other means, such as people falling us on twitter, calls from 311. generally, the feedback has been very constructive, and what we are really aiming to do is help people understand the different trade-offs that the t.e.p. would bring. and we were trying in these workshops to make sure that people understand what the trade-offs might be, and i think

most importantly, this was really a two-way dialogue. it was not just our side going out and saying, "this is what we are going to do." this is some people felt heard and listened to. this is based on some of what we have heard. and we did get some very specific feedback down to where we should keep this. one example was a lot of support for more -- for maintaining this at 19th and irving because of typography, but one of the trade-offs that came out of this process was a nearby stop that does not have those issues that we were planning to keep. that we can probably removed, so we can get our travel benefits.

so good progress moving forward on the t.e.p. we have completed these workshops, but we are now going out to other stakeholder groups. i think there is the merchant's association. we will be meeting with power and a lot of other organizations to really get as much feedback as we can, and with all of that, we will be revising the proposals and coming back to the community in the fall with revisions so we can tell them how we change, based on what we have heard from them, and still, we need to read the completion of the initial study done this summer, and the eir remains largely on track to be done next summer. and then finally, two awards to mention. sf parks again was recognized.

i think that every meeting, we are talking about another sf park award. in santiago, chilly -- chile, and they won an award. they were looking at the parking meter attendants to process transactions, and they basically adopted the sf park plan, and we did not have any staff there, but we have lots of volunteers -- not in this budget climate -- but i believe there was another agency person who accepted on their behalf. great work from them and the park team. and then finally, the american planning association, california chapter, recently awarded innovation and korean community

planning to the treasure island development, which got the green and community planning board, and while that was not a project that was out of the mta, and there were many empty staffers that contributed to the work that went through city hall and the treasure island's planning, and i want to acknowledge bond ye and another who left us. mike, jack, and an engineer really shaped the engineering side of what is being held up as one of the most sustainable green developments in the country that we are all looking forward to seeing. somali bose, chris, and julie from the transit side, and a

great team effort throughout the mta and the city attorney's office. a model plan right here in san francisco. and that is the end of my report. vice chairman brinkman: thank you. thank you very much. i want to say that our soon to a board member has joined us. she has come to find out what she is in for. she will be appearing at the rules committee meeting on thursday and then hopefully joining us for our first empty meeting in june. very nice to see you. thank you. director reiskin, i, for one, do not get tired of hearing about the awards. keep on announcing them. and i went through their i think just yesterday, and the new thing is just nice. i do not know if anyone else has had a chance to go through there,