>> let's get started. >> item 12, presentation and discuss regarding light rail service. >> madam, chair and directors, this is an item that we are bringing as a result of an inquiry from our board member heinieke. who had kind of raised some very legitimate and fair questions and concerns about the light rail service, and so we wanted to come and just let you know a little bit about what has been happening,

particularly in the subway, but light rail in general but some of the things that we are doing about it. so mr. haily has prepared a presentation to walk through with you and he will enjoy answering all of your questions. >> thank you, mr. haily. >> thank you, and good afternoon. and i will just in terms of introduction, what you will see is essentially a presentation that we are concluding and i think that you will, that we need to improve that this is a system that is going through a lot of transition right now in terms of on time performance, we will talk to it but clearly we are not satisfied with the results and we want to share with you some of the actions and programs that we are taking place to improve but i also want to both acknowledge and express appreciation because some of the things that you

will see that we are introducing and there are positive, i believe, some positive things going on, that we are beginning to reap the benefits of and improve the service down the road but they result directly from your support and your leadership particularly in the last couple of years in terms of not only adopting the budget that was proposed, but more importantly, the capitol program, that you have adopted, that has made a fairly dramatic shift in the way that the projects being delivered and projects that are in the pipeline moving forward, are closely very closely aligned to the needs of the transit operation and they will leave very shortly to infrastructure improvements that will benefit the whole service, and so with that, by

way of introduction, again, to go through this quickly, what i will walk you through in terms of the service, and the continue to have difficulties with on time performance, i think that you all know the challenges in both in the subway which is the smaller part of the light rail system has indicated on the surface and we will talk about the programs that we are dealing with, with that. and the delays to the principle source and the major source and the major culprit are delays traced back to the vehicles that represent a significant portion. we have a capacity issues in the sense that we, the evidence themselves and not having enough vehicles to run the schedule that we would need or that we would like to run. and then, it is important to note and this gets to comments that we want to talk about with the way that we supervise the

system is that all five lines go through the subway at one point and how we respond with the incidents that will occur in a system as large and heavily utilized as ours becomes important. and this is an area and this is where we stand now and just quickly to touch on some of the things that effect the service, the vehicles, we have both the reliability and the availability problem, we are working on both of those which we will talk more in a minute, and our vehicles run on a complicated infrainstruct stur and i look at the programs that you have dealt with improving the track conditions and particularly on the surface, there are 20 locations that have already been identified that have the capability for signal priority to be introduced and we are working with our colleagues and sustain

able streets to get that process going, and that will make a big difference, on just on overhead lines that saw something that we talk a lot about and we had a couple of incidents over the last few weeks which were traced back to the problems with the overhead lines and those of you who look at the diversity of the vehicles that we have unlike other place wes have three different kinds of overhead. we have historic vehicles, that run on one pole and they have overhead requirements and we have lrvs that have a different one and then we have trolly coaches sometimes having to interline with the places like the church and boats. and so that requires careful attention, and all of the time. and so, big part of the infrastructure. and you earlier saw someone who and acknowledged someone who has shown great leadership in helping us improve the

management using the technology that we have with the line management center. you know the limitations of our radio system, one chanedle for the entire rail system with everybody on it. and it makes for, if it is an operator has an problem they have to wait in the cue to be picked up and supervisors can't talk to one another and so it places a greater communication burden on the managers and their capabilities to understand what the problem is, and respond to that problem quickly, and make the right kind of service call. and it is not just having so it is a combination of having the managers, clarifying their roles and responsibilities and moving forward. and our service right now from a schedule perspective is limited by the number of vehicles. we are scheduling 114 and we dropped that down over a two-year period and we understand the impacts that has

had in terms of bunching, caping and crowding and we want to talk in a minute about what we are trying to do with that and then also the operation in mixed flow and we talked some of the times where you have a challenges in the subway but at the same time you then look at the capacity of the subway or our ability to control what goes on there verses running a major push and a say line like the kt line on ocean satisfy where you are subject to stop signs and traffic lights and all of that. and let's talk a little bit about or go through this, and on what we are doing, with your help and support, we are really doing a number of things on the vehicle side, we have not only two years ago begun a process, to do a modest overhaul for some of the components and we have done 60 cars and the components are showing an improvement in performance and if you trace back the measure

and we will show you the distance over a couple of years you see a gradual upward trend and it is only gradual and we need to really evaluate on how we are doing it, and what our rehab program is and what the scope is and how we are delivering it in particular the other thing that we would build in here that has been something that we have got good results on, that will benefit with solving these problems, you may remember that we talked about a number of vehicles that sustained heavy damage or a period of years that were kind of in vehicle and in a separate category, and what we did was work out a program so that we could begin to get what will essentially be ten vehicles that had structural damage, and back into service and there are three vehicles that are back in right now and two of them are in service and one of them are being tested and we expect to have three vehicles back by the

end of the year. that is a straight up addition to our car availability number and it will allow us to do some things with the service that i will talk about in a moment. and we will continue to look at the way to overhaul these cars, many of the things that you are seeing, and i will focus on one point in particular on under infrastructure, and trained subway entries, and three, all of our systems come in through three portals. and we need to have, to run the kind of service that we should be running, with we need to have those entries be successful at least 98, 99 percent of the cases, that means that you have somewhere between 15 to 30 trains a day have a failed entry, a failed entry is very, very detrimental to the service because it allows to operate at a lower speed, safely and you increase

the safety margin and it backs up all of the service behind it. we have now gone through a process in the last four or five months where every failed entry, is taken out of service because it is for a train control program and we have replaced a number of components and these are 15-year-old rail cars that were never replaced things like excuse me, like cards, in and out of the system that talk or facilitate symptoms there are not cards that were overhauled at the time and what we are doing now is today we went through the last couple of weeks later and we will now come and replace the antennas and so it is, what we are doing, is catching up and we will continue to catch up, and make sure that the vehicles are as reliable as we can. but they, along with looking at

the infrastructure and to show you how sensitive, if you will, these infrastructures are in addition to vehicle issues, you have either train control issues and the counter that you have heard about that causes disturbed blocks and gives it the permission to go in and the other thing that we have seen as we analyze these incidents is that a greater and greater percentage of these is once they have and fail and go into it manual and they are able to reacquire the automatic control later on and to that, it means that we have to work with the operation staff to make sure that the proper signage and procedure is followed and the train is positioned in the right spot and the train enters at the right speed. and so, we are making both on the vehicle side and the infrastructure side, substantial investments, the

track replacement projects and there are three that are significant and moving forward right now, and mmt and down at the turn around outside between the mmt and the portal and we will be moving forward on the sunset tunnel and most significantly twin peaks tunnel, which carries the bulk of our rail service and so there is a number of actions in that area, and in terms of service, we have talked a lot about how we can better manage the service, and in driving, the on time performances this is one of the variables that we have to do and the point to make here, is that in reviewing all of these incidents, we are analyzing, the roles and responsibilities of all of the responders and you have an operator who could assist with trouble shooting and communication. and you have a first line transportation supervisor who sometimes responds and we are entirely dependant too great of an extent on the controller,

and working and particularly on the mechanics in the field that we call mru, and a lot of times when you think about the number of trains that we are scheduling through, 20-some odd trains an hour to go through the subway and if you have a delay or a break down, there has got to be a very, the right call needs to be made about how to respond, whether this is a safety sensitive critical issue. or whether you can move or you can off load the train and move it to a place where you can move, excuse me, move by the train. so, how will you use the existing technology and how will you have, what our supervisors are trained to do and how we worked with them, to effectively give them the tools to trouble shoot and then where we positioned them to become critical to better management of the system. and one of the things that i talked about was the schedules. we have right now our

scheduling around fleet availability and a number of cars that we can safely do and one of the things that we looked at in particular, and it would take us, it is going to take us two or three or even four cycles of schedules before we are able to work through all of the issues in the schedules. and part of it again, stems from capacity of the system and particularly the cars. and but, at the same time we are moving devicively to do a number of things first of all, coming in june, at the end or excuse me, at the end of this month. we will go to a different operation at the embarcadero and we are calling it a fall back operation, but why we are worried about it at all is what we found was that three lines k, l, and m all turn around there. and we looked at the schedule time this they were all

schedule to have five minutes to make that turn. and only ten percent of the cases were they able to do it on schedule. >> so you have a train coming out of there leaving late and it leads to bunches and gaps. it leads to everything, being late behind it. is he we were able to take a look at the operation to analyze both using the control, and the train control system and the two pocket tracks where they turn around and we now believe that we will be in the position with this new fall back operation to reduce the time by two minutes which will be significant. and all of the trains picked that up and we have gone through it and through the exercise and the walk through and it does not require, additional investment and we will be a critical first step, and we also need to move decisively to deal with the bottle necks in the system, and fourth and king we are moving forward to get priority for the trains so that it does not sit

for 90 seconds through the cycle. and we are looking at west portal as well. and one of the things that we have done in the last point on there is over the years, as we have had incidents, we have, or we may see a lot of double xs, painted on the ground at various places on the system. it requires a train to come to a complete stop in many cases, you know the double xs were put in as ten or 12 years ago. and because of some kind of an accident or incident, we are now going through with safety, at each of those locations and see if we can address that. so, with these steps, we are trying to take some other actions, and in addition, we have a very sophisticated train, control system. we have kind of the new and the old blended over day. and so, with our train control

system, one of the things that we believe as a major customer service benefit and initiative is starting next month, we will begin testing double birthing. and double birthing, the problem that that solves is if you have been on a train and you are sitting in the station and you are looking down and you see the platform or if you are and you say why, why can't i get out here? and you hear the announcement and the next stop and you are saying, no i am in embarcadaro and i will get off now. what this does is allow us to at certain times that it will enable the system for two trains to load and unload in primarily, i think that the way that this is what we need to test. but where we will be using it is in the three downtown stations that they have the longest platforms as well as the biggest crowds in between

mongomery and powell and civil center and so that is something that we will work through and come forward with a test regime and in addition, one of the things that we are looking at, and you have seen a lot of the expansion plans, and so i will particularly along it with the arena and the additional events, one of the things and as we contemplate how we will fit in things like the e, line and the additional service is that we need some flexibility in the system and that means that we have got to be able to to more efficiently move the trains so if you have an lrv and an historic car and something happens to one of the cars, it would be very nice to be able to send a trap around something like that rather than having to jerry man der something to push or pull it. one of the things that we have asked our signal manufacturer to do, is to get a good concept

model and then we would probably come forward and take a look at it is to provide some modern train control system for the street. and a way to protect the trains and allow us to single the track and allow us to run against the current of traffic where we are meeting and you could run the tracks up and the adverse direction train if you needed to. and i think that is very important as we if we are able to expand the capacity to run efficiency and we will once again look at the summer test and the possibility of using the through-car trains in the subway, again, the constraint there is the vehicles. specifically the coupling or the joining of three vehicles, which not only holds them together, but transmits all of the electrical subsystems

together. so these vehicles were i went back and one of the things that we are blessed with is a lot of constitutional memory and i was able to find out from several people when these cars were brought on board. we did not test them, and we did not require that they be tested for three car trains. so this is a bit of a new ground for us in some respects but we will from the train, control, perspective, and the system perspective there is no reason that it will not work on it. and we will envision something like doing it from saint francis circle to the subway and to relieve the grounding and i think that those are the kinds of things that we will have to continue to look at and we will try to make the progress in a number of initiatives and customer communications will continue to do that. and there is a project that will enhance that.

we are continuing to pay a lot of attention, excuse me, on all of the causes, all of the issues, related to the rail system. and again, i would want to publicly acknowledge, the benefits and the support that you as a board have given us, to be able to particularly use our capitol resources to help to support the service and so with that, this is you know, this is where we are. and these are some of the actions that were implemented to address the concerns and to improve. but it is my feeling that with these kinds of things in place and that continued support we will see the improvement in the performance. >> directors? comments or questions? >> i have a bench.

>> heinieke. >> thank you, for having this hearing. and as you know, it is personal to me because this is my every day commute and i'm glad that i am able to have this commute so i can comment with you, and i appreciate you recognizing the problems. and addressing them here today. i will just generally, riding the muni metro is frustrating. and the frustration which i want to talk about specifically occasionally we are shown how great the service can be. and then, in quite often it does not live up to that and my fellow riders and i are left wondering why is it? that we can't have that same smooth service that we had yesterday. and i realize now that you know, it is a frustration, and you get shown a little bit of greatness on one day and then on three successful days you don't have it and why can't we have it every day? >> and i appreciate the explanation for the multitude of problems that you face on a

daily basis and at the end of this, i want to be sure that we are addressing some of the big ones and i will ask for some way to sort of measure whether this is working. and whether director haily can fix this or we need to go a different route and talk about bond measures or whatever for a whole new lrv fleet. but i will say that the current status is not good enough. it is too, scatter shot and too inconsistent especially when we have the infrastructure with the tunnels that should be a great service and which we do see every now and again. so the frustration is that we see these things, sort of on a daily basis, anybody who asks the muni downtown in the morning knows that on many if not most given days there is going to be a significant slow down at vaness. and i am gathering from what you are saying that one of the problems that we are seeing

there is failed portal, entries from the trains coming in and slowing down the rest of the group. i just, if nothing else i want the people outside on that train just going at 50 miles an hour outside of a church station to understand what is going on. and from what i have understand from this presentation and the previous discussions there is obviously a bit of traffic and you have several lines coming together there but the problem with the situation with the failed entries at the portal. >> that is correct. and the reason that i applaud your... detailed experiences as a rider, because the reason that you are seeing it or feeling it more ad vaness is why you may feel the delay is longer or picking up again is because the... once you are given the permission as an operator, to go into the subway under manual control or under your control, the procedure

allows you at some point and in the first point is that the bottom of van esss >> right. >> which is at the bottom of church and debose. >> and where we allow the operator to attempt and require it is va. aness. you may not imagine that you will sit at vaness for as long as a minute to 90 seconds and what the operator is doing is going through the protocol to reacquire the control and depending on that is a judgment call between the people managing the service as to whether or not they want to do that but that is in fact what happens. >> so that is one common slow down is at vaness station and one significant problem about that is the failed atcs, acquiring the triangle and what i understand, to be telling us is that he is working on something to fix that. >> so we wl