$3 billion or so from the federal government to make the first significant steps on that. the governor will be signing the bill in san francisco here tomorrow. certainly a lot of leadership from him to get that done. great news for san francisco and for the bay area to get high- speed rail moving, which includes the electrification of cal train and from cal train to the trans bay terminal. part of what got approved work connectivity funds, some of which were designated to muni and were part of that funding plan. you may remember a few months ago, there was the resolution talking about how we would address any shortfalls with these resolutions, which i do not think has been rendered moot, so that is very good news.

some smaller stuff, where we initiated some additional reroutes three union square, as well as ax and bx, kind of like the 30 and 45 and 91 owl as we continue progress in union square. this is work on the tunnel contract, which is progressing well. we have 93% of the utility relocation more complete, and we should be done, the balance of it soon. at a at -- at where the mosconi station would be. that is progressing forward well. there has been some concern, and that is putting it mildly, to be

certain, with some merchants in north beach. where they are building it to put the machine in. the machines in, they will come their way to north beach and will be retrieved. we have heard some very strong concerns from the north beach merchants as well as the supervisor about the construction impacts, so we will continue to work with them and help them understand what portrait was in proved and the impacts to mitigate. they have asked us to look at some alternatives to the machines, which is how our construction contract is based, we are working with them on that. since we last met, we implemented boarding. a and that was of little later than you wanted us to.

a at -- we will report back to you. so far, so good. two more things. on the youth fast pass, it included money from the region. the region has now considered this twice. the staff has recommended a few different things, but two of the options that will now go to the full commission, i think it is next week, two of the options would send $4 million our way. it is four out of five.

one option would be looking at a more broad regional program which would, i think, in effect delayed implementation. the first two options that staff is recommending, they will have $4 million out of $5 million, so a pilot would have to be shorter in duration because there is less funding, and that would be more positive. we are grateful to the staff for recommending this money. while we certainly would like $5 million, as anyone who has followed the discussion would know, it has been a lot of work to try to get the region on board with supporting a plan like this, and its approval is by no means guaranteed, but we continue to work with the city family and the region, and we hope to be able to bring forward a plan to build a pilot up and running. we have been working in the meantime. we have been meeting with the

school district and the supervisor's office and a number of different stakeholders, folks from the freedom unique coalition. i do not know what they're calling themselves, but meeting with them to work on implementation, are rich, distribution, all of that stuff, so we are hoping we will get a positive vote, and from there, we will move forward. at this point, because of the delay, we thought we would be hearing from them a couple of months ago, but we are probably looking at something like an october start versus august or september. hopefully we will get approval on july 25. and then my last, i promise, i've been here has to do with strollers. strollers have been out in public discussion recently, and

i think there was a supervisor resolution urging us to look at the issue, which we have done, and we did some research on the other transit systems, and i found it is really all over the map. from it is almost impossible to get a stroller onto no restriction. our current policy is you have to fold it and carry it on. as someone who did that at one point, it is a little bit -- it can be difficult, so we have talked to the muni accessibility council, which i think has renamed itself the multi modal advisory council. i think we may be talked to me -- the c.a.c. looking at try to

have a better proposal, and it looks like we're going towards more of a common-sense proposal. if you can safely get your stroller on and safely secured and, if you can do it in a way that is not going to block people from moving in the vehicle, then we would not restrict you in doing so and would encourage you to do so because we want to encourage people to use muni even when they have a child in the stroller. there are some safety concerns, some mobility concerns. we do not want folks with strollers taking the state's reserved up from fort people like seniors and those with disabilities, but we believe given the relatively small amount of people that would be trying to board with a stroller, and more common-sense judgment- based policy, and that i believe is the end of my report.

vice chair brinkman: thank you. this was a long process with a lot of work, so congratulations. the implementation of the boarding, which we are calling the ramos principle, i want to say again that it was director ramos who pushed us in that direction, and they were incredibly supportive of this. they have been out helping to educate people. i have not had a chance to take a good look, but i am hoping that is really helping to move things along. thank you very much. secretary boomer: madam, you do

have a speaker card. one person has turned in a speaker card. >> good evening, chairman, board. a very good report we got from mr. reiskin. $20 million on the bonds. they can help. you see you are going to raise in 3.7%. there is the money for the medallion loan. $20 million. to loan your money below 4%. because we have a lot of threat from the market. limousines, cabdrivers, the food price of buying the medallion on the street.

muni is a good organization. then they give you a loan. going to pay the loan if we are buying a medallion. here we do not eat food when you have to pay the loan. but this is coming. it is no more for a single operator. this is a completed obligation. it is very nice now. the neighborhood is very happy. the cab driver is very happy. the subway is finished by 2018 or 2017. all of the visitors in the city, but we have to be patient with all of the construction also.

it is a very good organization. thank you. secretary boomer: mr. grueber, the last person is turned in a speaker card. >> i want to thank director reiskin for returning taxis to their own department, directly under the director. i think that is the right place for it. i think it sends a bad message. it was underfinanced. i do not find fault with the finance director at all, but it just did not belong there, so thank you for that and also, i would like to express the feeling that i hope that chris

hiachi has done, i think she is the right for the job. secretary boomer: we will move to item eight, the report. vice chair brinkman: welcome. >> i am with the citizens advisor recounts all. before i get started with our recommendations and some discussions, some previous recommendations, i want to extend a warm welcome to our new director on the mta board, and i

also have an invitation for you to come visit us at one of our meetings. you and of course all of your colleagues on the board are welcome to attend any c.a.c. or committee meeting, and we are always happy to have members of the mta board there. that has been a fairly common occurrence in the past, which we are fairly pleased about, again, i welcome, and we hope to get to meet you and talk with you about what we do and what you want to do and all of that, so thank you. and i also wanted to note, extending welcome publicly to the newest member of the c.a.c. who was appointed by mayor ed lee. he is from the market street

railway board, in he replaces james, who has left -- and he replaces james, and we thank him for his service. most of what -- my recommendations to they pertain to the sfmta strategic plan. i am probably going to get the nomenclature wrong here, but the first set of goals, when they came out for the sfmta strategic plan, the c.a.c.'s reaction to it was not particularly warm. director reiskin talked about

it, and i sort of skeptically acknowledged that an agreed to disagree and move on, but when we got the full set of goals for the sfmta strategic plan, we thought it was a good document. we thought it was warmly received. we have a lot of recommendations for changes, but i think overall, we are pleased that it reflected on the efforts to allay skepticism. and we also have a lot of informal conversation. the parts of the plan were split into three committees of the c.a.c. about ways it could

be made better and a lot of changes to occurred just from that kind of informal situation. there were a lot of improvements that have been made which were not codified in the recommendations that we have made to you today. one of our recommendations regards messaging in pursuit of the 50/50 goal. our recommendation on that is this was to deliver real-time service information, particularly regarding planned and unplanned delays and shutdowns, allowing people to make alternate plans. we would also like to seeing the psr process inc. said that members of the public, they can

do that through those means. and we think that would be a good way to enhance communication between eyunni and their customers. we also were looking at the daily ops reports, that they also be available on the redesigned web site. we believe it should be for both desktop and mobile platforms. this is a very important part without people interact with the web, and we also think it is important that should be -- the site ever displayed ads, they are disruptive in a bigger way they are then in say a desktop way. so if we ever go there, we want

to leave mobile out of that. another recommendation regards signage. we believe that there should be prioritized, including the word "fees" on everything. that drives us crazy. . this is hugely important. we make so many of these ad hoc changes, some of which are good. for example, we had a meeting about the subway platform signs. and we really think there needs

to be a comprehensive plan for san francisco, one that gives people at every point of entry into the system enough information to ride the system. we too often create tools that are designed for people already know the system. they are designed for us, and san francisco is a tourist destination. we want the system to be very friendly to people and have not been to san francisco before, for people who have never written transit before or four people you have never ridden -- people who have never ridden transit before or for people who have never ridden muni before. we think that needs to be a

priority for the agency going forward. we have also made a similar recommendation with regard to tep. we think that is an important part of the process. we believe they should improve the existing u.d. map. -- existing muni9 -- muni mpa -- map. we want to see this continued and built upon. it is a really good piece of information design, and we're anxious to see that remain in service. it is very, very useful. with regard to the station agent bullets, -- booths, we would like to have a uniform situation with them.

it was here for many years when i was at the agency, and i see the director is smiling because he knows exactly what i am going to say. there is a sign at one st. that said in the station booth "this is not bart." it is not helpful to tell people what this is not. that is certain like the ultimate failure. we think they too often have been neglected as an important point of information distribution for the trans riders. -- for the transit riders. they should go with the communication the public has. with regard to public

announcement systems, we recommend that the public address systems be improved and a lot of places. even when the system is working, which is not always, it is not really audible. sometimes the announcements that come from central control are very hard to year even under the best of circumstances. there is a lot of eco. and we think that operators and others and should receive more training on verbal communication skills -- excuse me. allergies are killing me today, and that they be made or more robust and pre-recorded impossible. the stock announcements on some of the buses have been, i think, very helpful, as a been the announcements there, which have the advantage of being trilingual in a way that is recorded by people of each of

the languages represented, so that is a nice benefit to doing it that way as well. we recommend that the electronic signage inside stations be upgraded as well. that includes the platform level, which we know the agency is working on, and also the signage at the mezzanine level. there was some discussion that we do not do any signage at street level. we understand there are maintenance issues around that and challenges around that. we understand there are some agencies and the world that do that, and we will take a look at those in the future to see if there is something there that can guide us. we also have a recommendation that the police department or fire department get additional information about not blocking transit and other modes of transportation and removing obstructions to the traffic. we also recommend they get additional transportation

education pertaining to san francisco. there are police and fire activities because of the emergency action that must block muni, and we totally accept that. there are times when they do not have to, and we think that is something they should give some consideration to, and also, they need to prioritize removing obstructions to the flow of transit and other non automobile traffic. we think there is a lot of room for improvement there. we reckon the track lessons learned -- i think that is kind of self-explanatory. every year, we are faced with a good number of special events. there is another one coming up with the america's cup. but there is oracle world to

sporting events, you know, all of these things, and we think there needs to be some effort to have a focused process of continual improvement based on what we learn about what works and what does not with regard to those. we also recommend that psr's reflect not just on officers. st. supervisors have the responsibility for service delivery and not just operators, and we want to make sure they get incorporated into the process of figuring out what went wrong when it is something that falls within their bailiwick. at we want to call this out as

something that should be a high priority for the agency. there is also in their an objective to improve the service management, including a fleet manageable online operations center. that is certainly something we agree with. we recommend this also includes the designation of the vehicles at the embarcadero center. it is very important i think to the functioning of the system that we do that. every time we send out three of the same vehicle in a row, we are wasting resources, because one is loaded, one is average loaded, and the third one is empty, and it is awful to be rolling around some very expensive equipment at a very high cost when it is not carrying passengers. we think there needs to be a more even flow of winds coming

out of the embarcadero and that his designation is something that should be part of the strategy. they also recommend a process for vehicles towing vehicles be streamlined. muni officers should be able to call, and they should be prioritized. when we look at the process for how vehicles blocking muni are removed, and towed away, there are a lot of steps to that process, and we think you can eliminate at least one of those steps and thus get traffic flowing soon. it is very important that we be able to respond rapidly to new vehicles that are blocking the flow of muni. we also recommend that mta, bart, and cal train work on the bike plant, that that be a joint effort. we think that is self- explanatory, and we also

recommend a plan. this is a concern that started similar to the stroller issue. space is a very sensitive subject, but we think we should least put a toe in the water. some have had some success with this, and we think looking at the best examples could be instructive. getting away from the strategic plan for the last two recommendations, we want to recognize the changes to the parking system. we know this had to go into effect on june 1. we recommend a proposal for a more fair and equitable system be drafted no later than september, allowing contractors to park at metered spaces but without a metered limit on time. we think a permit should allow them to park in the area similar to the proposed prepaid daily

rpp's, that i believe the staff are recommending. we also recommend that as we do the new electronic signs, that there is that after you are new designations.-- signs per direction for two reasons. one is that we have talked about the possibility of doing double berthing, and that leaves the possibility of doing it 3-car trains, which is something that has also been talk about in context with the t.e.p. those are the recommendations we have for you. that was quite a lot because our last meeting was cancelled due to or initiatives. i want to say just a couple things about recommendations we have made th