about. is that sorted out in the design phase? has it been addressed or as we get further along in the project? >> the parking has been addressed the stations picked up and lost are identified in the environmental report. anybody interested in the parking i suggest go to appendix and it has a block by block break down and how many are eliminated because of the project. the actual changing of the stops and the installation and removal of meters, that type of thing, is happening in the next few months. once the environmental report is completed we will use that as a model to basis parking legislation on, and my team is working with the city's traffic engineer to draft that legislation and we will be

coming back after community outreach and so forth within the next few months, so if we get the decision in september then sometime in late winter or spring you will hear about parking legislation. >> while you're up there one more question because i know director ramos brought it up -- director nolan brought it up. do you see any ability to speed this up? do you think as director ramos asked we're willing to make hard decisions and push on this do you see the ability for this to move faster? am i putting you too much on the spot there? >> we're looking at ways to try to save time on the project, and we maybe able to knock a few months off the schedule, maybe as much as half a year, but

there are a lot of interest groups quite justly have an interest in this project, and we have to take the time to hear their concerns, and figure out what the proper approach is. >> okay. thank you. i just want to say that i feel like we are addressing parking concerns all over the city. we are addressing it with better transit and walking and taxi service and car sharing that we are hearing about in this agenda. i know parking is a big concern but i think as we have heard moving forward we can manage the parking to make it available. i mean we know we can do that so we just need to move on that and manage the parking. be make sure it's available to the people that need it and people that want to take fabulous brt or taxi or car share experience can do that as well. >> thank you director.

director rubke. >> i heard from members -- >> [inaudible] >> thanks. i heard from members from the blind community and i know you're familiar with their upon concerns and i want to bring it up here and thank you for your initial outreach and i know you're going to do more and please do as much as you can and as can you imagine crossing a lane of traffic at once is frightening without vision and having islands is the worse case scenario for my friends who are visually impaired but with that said they're exciting working with you guys and design accessible features and a boarding platform in the middle and the design here really accessible and wonderful and safe for everyone. i think on that issue i think it's very important that we take the time. i don't want to slow down the project but to address those concerns because those members of our public are very vulnerable in the situation of crossing the street with

divided lanes and i want those folks to get to the bus safely so if there is anything i can do to help that let me know, and i also know people were concerned about the proposed stops. of course everyone is passionate about removing particular stops. i am interested in hearing the reasoning of having a stop at mccallister instead of grove and if you could address that that would be great. >> the primary reason it's to preserve the east-west connection with the number five line. >> okay. >> we looked at -- as i mentioned before we looked at the stops that were going to be consolidated. the one at grove had the least ridership of the three. basically we looked immediately to the south, to the north and the stop on either side are more ridership than grove street so it's the one

that ended up being consolidateed. >> fair enough and you know you have a large population of blind folks coming from that location. >> and we intend to work closely with that. i can tell you i walked sections of the corridor with the ada coordinator and paula johnson from the mayor's office and we're maximizing the comfort for the people in the disabled community. >> thank you. >> you were getting up -- were you going to answer somebody? >> oh the answer on golden gate transit. we are working with them and using the same stops. we are coordinating and essentially they can run in the brt lanes and get in and out to make their other runs and other parts of the city as they need to, so golden gate transit has been taken into account and i wanted to make that sure that was clear. >> yeah. the schedule here --

the period that seems awfully long to me is the 30% signed completed and 100% design completed and year and a half, year and a quarter. does that offer possibilities for saving time? >> if things go smoothly we might be able to save some time on that. as i said there are a fair amount of coordination that has to go on. if we're talking about what i see as the next hurdle we have to get over is coming with agreement with the arts commission and other people involved in the civic design review process as to what the stations are going to look like and what the corridor is going to look like. once we lock that down the design can proceed more quickly. >> director was talking about tough decisions and one might be is having nor designers and

move it along. is that the kind of thing? >> if i can address some of the schedule questions and concerns? first of all my reaction generally is the same as yours with the schedule looking forward that another two years with design and two years to build seems like an awfully long time and longer than should be required so some things that we're doing -- we have advanced some of the preliminary design so we're moving that forward. we have looked at resource levels in terms of our staffing to make sure between us or dpw or whoever is involved in the design that we have everybody working at full capacity, but moreover what i have talked with vince harris is about is evaluating different project delivery methods. that there maybe different ways to deliver

the project and reduce the time it takes from the schedule now which shows a traditional design build delivery method. we may complete the analysis and determine it wouldn't save time or different methods might have adverse impacts but it's something we're going to look at because i agree with you that getting from 30 to 100 to revenue service shouldn't take that long, so we will certainly do everything that we can to look at ways, whether it's through staffing at rks a different differ ree method, partnering with agencies and a contractor to figure out ways to advance the schedule. there was reference made to delays and caltrans. i think was a story that said caltrans caused the two year delay. that is absolutely inaccurate

and incorrect and i have talked to the regional director about the project. he's very supportive. the former head of the transportation authority and head of dpw went to meet with the head of caltrans late last year to ensure their support and helping to move this along, so i don't want us to throwing them under the bus. it's their road and they have been pretty good to work with. the schedule hasn't really slipped much i don't think in the last year, or the record of decision we were hoping would be earlier this year. as peter said should be around september, and the way it works is the environmental will be certified by the

transportation authority commission. that will really kind of lock inue were talking about the hard decisions and mostly about travel lanes and parking. when they do that -- i mean to some extent you have both done that, their commission and this board, and the approval of the locally preferred alternative. presuming they certify the environmental and maybe it will change based on the comments and nonetheless it will come here for approval. the parking changes are well defined. with your approval of those that's the main trade off decisions that we typically face in the transportation projects. that will be done from that point forward it's design and build. the transportation authority has been working very closely with us that they will hand it over to us at the record of decision but they have done

an extraordinary amount of outreach to the blind community and others but many stakeholders up and down the corridor and because of their outreach there is the level of support as you say for the project. there is a lot of -- i mentioned michael schwartz because he's the lead on the environmental and i want to acknowledge the project manager, sherri dafrosty and one the one handing the keys over to the project upon receipt of the record of decision but we are working closely with them. we all have an interest in moving this project as quickly as possible and nobody wants to wait until 2018 and we are coordinated and committed to make that happen sooner. >> is there a version of design build? >> so when when i was talking about delivery methods design

build is a candidate. there are others and other delivery models that other city agencies and other public agencies and transit agencies are using. some may apply better to certain types of projects. design build is typically done on design projects but design build is one of the delivery methods we will be a little evaluating and may provide opportunities to reduce the schedule. >> other city departments involved in this -- i think you mentioned -- >> the civic design review committee which is a committee of the arts commission which has jurisdiction over surface elements in the public right-of-way. dpw has jurisdiction. caltrans has jurisdiction. the planning department i believe has some jurisdiction. the puc has significant infrastructure, so there's a lot of patients of

the city family. >> >> and other agencies such as utilities need to be coordinating with during the construction to make sure it goes smoothly. >> and the example of the pagoda theater and how they work together when there is urgent's and i hope that and some are outside -- >> yeah, i spent six years here developing relationships and how to work with other city departments so we will absolutely work collaboratively. the pagoda theater was one parcel, 2-mile stretch of a state highway so it maybe more complex but i think you're right the same principles. very strong support i suspect from the board of supervisors and the ta commission and strongly supported by the mayor, by this board, by the planning commission, so i think this

will be similarly coming with a lot of broad support from all the key policy makers in the city which should get us all moving quickly. >> thank you. members of the board anything else? any final comment? >> [inaudible] >> michael schwartz. >> good afternoon. >> i am with the sfmta and based on public comment want to make sure people know where we are in the very near term and the final environmental document is available and as director reiskin said it will be certified by the board and we will bring it to this board in september and approval and adoption of the findings. anyone that wants to review the project it's on the project website and you can download all of the chapters and parking and 3.5 that goes into a longer description of parking, anything you would like to see and

anyone is welcome to send me an email if you have questions. thank you very much for your time. >> thank you mr. schwartz. director ramos. >> yeah. the reason i think there was speculation about caltrans because it's not crystal clear about the delay and there was speculation in the public forums what it could be and helpful to make that public and help people understand what are the delays, and ideally will build support for the tough decisions that we need to make. the reason i am concerned about this morning anything else we don't get enough money to run the transportation system from the federal government, the state government and from within the city and county. the only thing that we have to control the resources is how to use the streets and the longer we wait and the longer it takes to do projects like this the more we just throw away money we could

be saving biincreased efficiencies and we don't need to do that and disband 29 or go through stop reductions. these are i think things we are forced to do because we don't have the resources and this will increase the operations and help us deliver the service that every san franciscan deserves. thank you for your good work. >>i appreciate it. >>i will echo what director ramos said. we talk about this a lot and we as a city and county and as a transit agency have control over the streets and we need to take advantage of that to make the system run better and this say fabulous step in the right direction and we are looking forward to this project moving forward. it's going to be fabulous. >> thank you. >> moving on to the next item, item 12 and changing the definition and disparate impact

policies. directors no members of the public have identified -- >> have members of the board had a chance to look at this and presentation. are you interested to have a presentation for everybody? >> i have one question but other than that i don't think we need -- >> director reiskin -- >> i think it's fairly significant. we covered this at the policy and governance committee but i think it's worth the time to maybe quickly hit the highlights and a little bit speak to the process that got us to this point. >> okay. very good. >> good afternoon. >> hi everyone. i am julie kirb balm and the operations planning operations manager. on our title six program i work closely with kathleen who is in the regulatory affairs group and oversees the title six program.

i can go through the material briefly, but what i am bringing to you is a set of policies around how we evaluate service and fare changes, in particular our proposed service definition and our disparate impacts and disproportionate burden policies. for those of you not familiar title six is a civil rights act of 1964 addressing discrimination and most aspects of life in the u.s. and specifically states that no person in the united states shall on the groupeds of race, color or national origin excluded from participating in, denied the of benefits of or subject to discrimination of any activity receiving federal funds. and as an agency that receives federal funds from fta they monitor our transit

providers for compliance and in particular they issued a new circular with guidelines and part of why we're here is to meet the requirements in that new guidelines. a strong title six program ensures that public services including transportation are provided in a non discriminatory manner and provides opportunity for public decision making without regard to race, or national origin and color and provides access to service for lgbt population. it's critical and noncompliance can cause federal funding to be conditioned or with held. fta has recognized the mta's title six program as a strong program. they will send peer agencies to us for example to discuss and

review some of these issues. the specific things we're here today to talk about is the major service change definition and determines when analysis for service change is needed and our disparate impact and disproportionate policies which [inaudible] proposed major service changes or fare changes would adversely affect majority and low income populations and what alternatives need to be considered or impacts mitigated. i want to point out this is one small aspect of the overall title six program which we update every three years. we will be bringing that update to you this fall and it includes a number of topics, one of which is how our service is performing against our service standards, so one of the things that we will look at for example is

crowding. are we seeing minority routes more crowded than non majority routes? if so how are we addressing that? so these are specifically today talking about fare and service changes, but we evaluate our service through an equity lens in a number of different ways. in preparing for this work we spent a tremendous amount of time at the staff level really trying to digest this technical and complex project and i was particularly in support in addition to kathleen and helen quam and paul and at the staff level dove into all aspects of this material. we provided draft and comments on the circular itself and participated in title six webinars as well

as regional workshops to try to understand how our peer properties are addressing this issue. every large agency in the country is bringing these policies to their board for adoption. we also arrange for interviews and we learned a lot from chicago and los angeles and examples of majority /minority cities so that was helpful and we conducted a multilingual outreach process and shaped and formed our proposals and to the citizens' advisory council twice and muni advisory council. we connected two public workshops as well as made -- took comments via both email and 311. we also reached out directly to about 30 community based organizations and transportation advocacy groups who focus on equity issues to let them know this

work was under way. it's a fairly -- as i said a fairly abstract topic so we felt those conversations were really important to engage key stakeholders in the process. as i alluded to san francisco is a minor /majority city with 58% of residents being minority according to the census. for low income population we have flexibility how we define low income. our recommendation to the board is we use 200% of the federal poverty level which is also consistent with how we define qualifications for our life line pass. that ends up being 31% of san francisco households meet that definition. we average between two and

three people per household which is by that definition 31 to $38,000 so that just gives you a scale of the income we're talking about. for the analysis to date we have focused on using census data looking at the demographics of the routes that the neighborhoods they travel through and complemented with an on board survey and give information about who is using our service and one of the things we will be doing once that work is completed and doing the data collection and now doing data entry is see how closely the demographics of the ridership matches the demographics of the neighborhoods that the routes go through. i am really supportive of the cac's recommendation at the staff level we review the thresholds when we have this survey data available and we

will certainly follow up on that. this is a map here that shows all of the census tracks that have a higher percentage minority than 58%. as you can see in the map it's primary clustered in the southern part of the city as well as the sunset portions of the richmond and mission, treasure island and as well as areas in the western edition and north of market. the second map shows census tracks that are low income which means they have more households than the 31% city wide average. again we see the southeast corridor emerge as well as the outer sunset, the mission and portions of north and south of market in addition to treasure island. the way that we use the census data is by looking at the

-- for every census block group we determine what percentage of the population is majority as a percent of the total population. then this is the route here. we look at every stop and we draw a quarter mile radius around our surface stops and half mile radius around the subway stops. then we look at every census block group that intersects that radius, whether wholly or partially included in it. we add up all of the demographics of those particular block groups and that gives us the demographics of the route. in san francisco our routes -- particularly the cross town routes tend to be very long, so unlike some cities where their routes are very segregated or they will have very minority or non minority routes our routes tend to be more evenly balanced

because of the diversity of neighborhoods that they travel through. in terms of service and fare changes any fare change that is in place for more than six months requires an equity analysis and that is regardless of the dollar amount we're considering for the change. for a service change though there is acknowledgment by fta they don't want this high level of scrutiny get in the way of service and schedule changes part of the regular business so they allow us to design what is a major service change so once we determine that then also requires that we evaluate the impacts in minority and low income communities. through that analysis we are trying to determine if there is a

disparate impact on these communities? if we determine there isn't then the analysis is complete. if there is the circular gives clear guidance on the next steps which include evaluating alternatives, mitigations, or explaining the rational depending on the type of impact or burden we identify. this is primarily focused on route changes so for example if we are changing a route or eliminating a segment of a route. frequency changes which is modifying how often the bus arrives to pick up customers and span of changes and has to do with the hours of operation on i route. our proposed definition of a major service change is a change in transit service that is in effect for more than 12 months period and any of the criteria is met. a schedule change or

series of changes resulting in this amount or more or rolling or 24 month period. schedule change in the route with 25 trips or more a day and add or eliminate a route. change in revenue hours on route of 25% or more. a change in daily span of service of three hours or more and 25% or more where the route moves more than a quarter of a mile. corridors served by multiple routes will looked at this with route miles. what i mean by that is for example if we are -- we did this in 2009. we restructured the 10 and the 12 and there was a segment in pacific hites that used to be served by the 12 in peak periods between -- on pacific between fillmore and van ness. that

service was completely replaced by the 10 and we didn't think it was a service change because there was no disruption of service to the customers even though had a new name and capital projects are part of the service definition regardless whether the proposed change meets the criteria above. in developing this definition we were trying to find a delicate balance between ongoing system maintenance and addressing important equity issues. we consider the needs of minority and low income populations when we make any change, and this is really identifying the point at which we go through the much more formal process and circular work. the challenge is if you make the definition too narrow you really risk locking in the exist