why don't we open this up to public comment. are there any members of the public that would wish to comment on this item? >>♪ you asked me if my city air was clean and true blue and then i knew i replied you know what happens when you drive smoke gets in your eyes i know someday you will find electric cars that will drive and i know you will do well time will tell smoke will not get in your driving ieyes ♪ supervisor chu: thank you. are there any other member that would like to speak -- members of the public that would like to speak?

seeing none, public comment is closed. one final note, we ask different bodies, a different government departments to weigh in on decisions. in this situation, if the department has the authorization to do so, to go ahead and do so with the purchasers office. at and in between staff before any approved process is -- before anything is approved, you want to make sure that you are meeting in line with the required block. are the vehicles going to be these types of emissions? should it be replaced at all? tell me how your department is going to handle that and not create what we would consider another administrative burden, bottleneck in the process. >> i believe it is not a change in the traditional standards. >> --supervisor chu: we havcane

take the amendment as a whole? without objection. supervisor dufty: item move forward to the full board with recommendations. supervisor chu: can we do that without objection? ok. without objection. thank you. can you call the last item, item 9? i also want to announce that supervisor david chiu is with us for this item. >> item 9. hearing on the san francisco municipal transportation agency's transition to the clipper card on the following topics: 1) implementation of the clipper card; 2) 25-cent surcharge for single-use tickets; 3) technological problems with fare gates; and 4) outreach on the transition to the clipper card.

supervisor chu: thank you. i just want to thank supervisor chiu for bringing this forward. we have heard from many citizens about the implementation of this card, how people purchase it, how it is implemented. very glad that we have this hearing before us. >> thank you for hearing the item today as well as to the mtc, mta, and our vendor for attending this presentation. today's hearing is about the clipper card, which we hope will be in short order ubiquitous and something well known to every household in san francisco. let me first start by saying i absolutely support a single fare card use for transit. the concept of one car to ride them all, to ride the alphabet soup of transit agencies, the mtc, mta, bart, golden gate,

caltrain, vta, etc. we know all of our riders on the systems should not have to face numerous barriers for each agency. we know we need to make it more convenient for people to travel through the bay area. the clipper card has been in the works for more than a decade. i certainly appreciate these transitions are challenging and we know we are asking millions of people to change the way they get around every day. that being said, those of us on the board of supervisors have all heard concerns about the transition. if i could categorize, there are four categories that i have heard. first of all, concerns about the overall timing and staging of the transition. next monday on november 1 there will be no more paper as it passes sold to adults. all of them will have to be loaded onto cooper.

but at this time a little more than 25% of the passes are currently loaded on clipper cards. i am concerned muni and mtc will have significant issues on their hands next week. secondly, as our chairwoman just noted, many complaints around customer service out reach, not just on how people can get the cards but how people use them. the reduced number of places where the cards can be purchased. i have heard many issues raised by communities about language access issues, from the chinese community, spanish-speaking community, and others. another set of concerns around technical issues, the fact that new muni fare gates are easy to evade and they are slowed even when they work. i have personally seen a number of them out of service already. i want to understand with agencies are doing to address them.

the last category of concerns have been around policies. concerns that many of us have had about the new proposed surcharge for limited use muni tickets. i am pleased that it was suspended after it was initially discussed but i want to know what the plans are going down the line. i requested this hearing about a month ago. i want to credit agencies for the progress that you have made in the last couple of weeks. i understand even as today there is a press release about how muni past the lip -- distributors will sell clipper kurds in november with the fast pass. i think we are making progress but i think what i would like to hear from the mtc, and tsa, is what sorts of things you are thinking about and how we can have a conversation so that we can transform how san franciscans and bay area residents get around and ride transit. with that, i know there are two presentations from the mta and

mtc. at that point, we can hopefully have a good conversation. >> i work for the metropolitan transportation commission. the plan is for me to cover the first two items. the last two will be covered by mta. to ensure we are fully responsible, we have a member of the executive team here. just to briefly start off by talking about the over all clipper implementation, as mentioned it is the all in one transit card and it is currently working on five of the largest transit areas in the bay area. bart, caltrain and golden gate are currently accepting golden -- clipper kurds. with that, the seven agencies represent over 90% of bay area transit rider ship. that provides a great opportunity for interoperability

and convenience to the customer. the clipper card has been accused of being complex. part of that is our willingness to extend the willing fare structure that transit agencies have. as we brought these transit agencies on, we except that their products at discount. all told, the clipper card except for thousand unique their combinations, so it is a powerful card. it can be seen as complex but the argument can be as easily made that it is easy to use. lastly, i want to talk about what is happening with overall usage. the former name of the program was the translate card. that was in play for a number of years. this year, 2010, we relaunched not only a new car but a new name, the clipper card name. since then we have had a remarkable natural growth of people moving over to the

clipper card. we are averaging a 10% growth per week of the number of transactions. this discusses october 18 but as of october 15, we are averaging 225,000 daily transactions on the program, which is phenomenal growth. this represents a natural adoption from bay area transit users. we are still at the stage where people can choose to use. we will be talking about plans for time going forward as we work with transit agencies as they eliminate paper passes. our strategy really is to manage that success with them. just briefly, how you can get and use the clipper card, it is available online. as well you can go to the phones and any participating retailers. in san francisco, most locations will distribute cooper cards as well as value.

the other unique aspect that san francisco has with a vending machines, they dispense not only limited use cards, but others as well. i did also want to mention a feature on the clipper card called -- the automatic reload. you register your credit card to your credit card. every time your fare expires, it automatically replenishes it. what is great about that is you do not need to go to your retailer again or call. it automatically gives you your value or replenishes any cash that you might want to use. that is something that a smart card can uniquely offer. >> could you talk about the number of vendors that are selling this compared to the number of vendors selling other fares?

i think there is a sense it is a small subset of what is currently being sold. at a walgreen's in my district they ran out of clipper kurds within a few hours after it went on sale. i want to get a sense of how they are managing it. >> right now we have 88 vendors in san francisco. how we select those, first, we are trying to achieve geographic equity so that we have good distribution throughout the city. it is also important to know, we are helping people who really needed the service, including people with limited english proficiency. as well, in chinatown, we have 14 retailers offering clipper services. as i understand it, the top three sellers of the fastback

are already benders and we are in the final stage of setting up. right now, the merchants in san francisco represents 75% of our retail. we think we are doing a good job because -- >> my main question is how this compares to buying a new the fast pass. it is significantly different. >> because our strategy, the retailer is just one of our tactics. you can get it online or you can go to the vending machines. so there are different options for that. the mta staff says it is 180. so roughly half. >> is there a plan to ramp up? >> we are continuing to ramp up and vendors.

one of the interesting situations which you mentioned, the clipper system had been around for a number of years. early vendors dropped off because of lower rates. so there is this fatigue that we need to get out of as we tried to recruit. our focus is really on the limiting of proficiency, low income communities. those communities is where our focus is. we will continue to work on retailers there. if we find there is resistance, we will look to see what we can do to sweeten the pot. we agree it is something we need to be concerned about and it is a work in progress. >> conversations about giving the communities access is important, i think. i was just in the mission. no one there seems to be aware of the clipper transition. i looked at your map. it looks like there are one, two

sides in that neighborhood. again, it did not seem as if there was much understanding about what we would see. i looked on the map and it does not seem to have the amount of density that we are looking for. i appreciate the focus. >> this is a question for the automatic reloading. if individuals are purchasing these monthly figures, is there an option for them to reload a monthly fare? >> yes, they can reload the fast pass. i did not mention but right now 50% of our card holders are signed up for this auto load, so 50% of our members do not need to worry about a retailer. next i wanted to show you some charts about use on the sfmta's

various products. this is the top a pass. as mentioned, we see about one- third of customers have already moved over to clipper so that we have about 25,000 for the month to move over. while that may sound like a big never to transition in a single month, i want to put that in context. we have been averaging 150,000 new cars per month. that is a little bit more than 10% of the business we have been doing. certainly for this order of magnitude it is within our capacity. for the past few months because we have experienced such great growth, it has allowed us to iron out the kinks that you have heard about and has made the transition smoother than it perhaps would have been. >> were those san francisco or

bay area wide sales? >> bay area. san francisco right now is averaging about half of the transactions. 120,000 transactions are through mta vehicles. >> so you are confident over the next week that we are not going to run into a huge traffic jams? >> yes. at the bottom, that is the impasse that is scheduled for transmission in april. it is tracking the very closely as far as transition over to clipper from the paper product. about one-third of the 70,000 customers have already moved over to clipper. in absolute numbers, more people have moved over. moving on to the next slide, there are three slides here. these are transition that are

scheduled for later in 2011. a smaller number of customers have transition our work, with the exception of rtc. mta staff had done a fantastic job working with those patrons to move over. about one-third of them have already moved over. the thing about these customers is that we know that a clipper card is not something that they need to be as ready to accept. we are not surprised with these low numbers. we know that we will need special efforts to assist them in their transition. i will be talking about that in a couple of slides. questions about the readiness of the customer service center. this slide shows a number of the activity that have taken place already or are under way now. i do not want to go through all of them, but just to highlight a

few. of particular note for the city of san francisco, we're in the final stages of launching an in person customer center, one in the mezzanine level of the bart station, one in the ferry building. this will allow one-stop right away car replacement for lost or stolen cars as well as card issuance for senior use. you can walk up and get the card repair. the other major improvement this past weekend, we acquitted our customer service software which should hopefully be transparent to the customer only in that it is more powerful software. it will allow our representatives to process the work more carefully. we have also brought in some senior management from the customer service center.

>> frankly, i love the fact that they're in my district, but obviously, we have almost 800,000 people. the fact that we have two service centers a couple of feet apart does not seem to make sense. >> the reason for that is the only had budget for one. that was going to be in embarcadero. the vendor who runs the kiosk there also has a transit store in the ferry building. so as far as fitting it into the budget -- the beauty of having a close by, there is a long line at the embarcadero center -- if there is a long line at the embarcadero center, then they can refer everyone else over to the customer service center. mt a offices will provide

support. certainly, especially for the card issuer, stolen, lost replacement, we definitely remanding -- recommend going there. the last point on the slide to make -- we brought in a new trading manager. it is a big job to be a constant qualified customers servers representative. having a trading manager, that will help in the overall quality of information. i understand there is concern from constituents because the way the senior car distribution is different from what mta has done in the past. i wanted to talk about why that happened. mtc, having to work with seven agencies -- every agency did

their youth and senior differently. mtc knew that as far as a regional program, we needed one consistent way. our request was to find a common approach that looks for all the rules to be implemented. we were somewhat agnostic to what the process looked like but it seems to be consistent throughout the region. we are going through some challenges now with the senior car distribution. seniors need to learn about how to work with the clipper card, how to get one, and that is something great that the staff has done. we are reaching out to various senior centers across san francisco, but the work is not dead yet. there is still time to get this card into the hands of seniors who want that discount. once a senior gets the card, they do not need to worry about

their discount. they can ride on anybody's vehicle. yes, we it knowledge it may be difficult now. we think we have the right strategies but it will take time to work through the senior center. once we are done i think you will see a happy constituency. it is just getting through tough times. the youth program is similar. supervisor chu: we did receive a number of questions about the opportunity to apply and submit applications through the senior resource centers around the city. i know in our district the senior resource center on judah is a location where individuals can turn in those located -- applications. how is your organization or the mta providing that information, letting people know about these resource centers? i think that is a good opportunity to broaden the

availability of resources and access to this information. >> there are a number of centers accepting that. there are a number of locations listed on the clipper and mta .com website. >> and people can call 311. supervisor chu: are we proactively getting out and letting people know where people can work with these community members? >> yes, we are, and we are also investing more senior community members. lastly, the rtc card. the discount is similar on the clipper card. the card distribution is the same. the rtc, a few years ago, we

started issuing translink cards to rtc customers. as each agency came on line, each company could activate it as a transit payment vehicle. what we have heard has happened, people with the old card, they did not treat them like a credit card, which is what they are sort of, so we are working with various agencies here to identify that there are some defective cards due to general wear and tear. as i mentioned earlier, we are seeing a good number of rtc card holders transitioning. about one-third of them are already using the card already for their discounts. >> it is my understanding on

the mta website, it says the adult fast pass will not be available as of november 1 but the youth and senior passes will be available until february and then the impasse until april. on the clipper card website it says all of these fast passes will only be available on the clipper. i understand that is a discrepancy between the clipper and mt a website that someone is looking into. but i just want to clarify that is the transition schedule for these cards. >> that is the correct schedule. i believe fast pass is moving over to clipper in november. we are hopefully changing it so that it is clear as to the headline that it is the a pass. wish we could have done it

earlier. moving on to talk a little bit about what our efforts have been regarding communities with limited english deficiencies. this also started from earlier in the year. mtc worked with the transit agency's as we were defining our market launch to define what their specific concerns would be. what we have done is worked through that with mta and as we are learning more we continue to modify that. over the summer we sponsored 17 events in san francisco. we've been educated consumers about clipper, how to use it, how to get the card, and all of the event or multilevel. that allowed us to reach out to all the communities in san francisco. to highlight some key things that we did as a part of that out reach, we had a ride along on some key bus routes.

we were targeting non english speaking communities. another of that that we participated in was the autumn moon festival. that was a great success in that we received 250 applications for the car there. lastly, we have the press event in october. that is marking what we had planned. we were contacted by the community, and based on that information, conversation that we have had with n t a staff, we are collaborating on a more enhanced wrapup starting in january. we are working to identify specific strategies to ensure the outreach addresses the perceived needs that they have.

we do know that part of that will be an advertising campaign that targets non english- speaking communities. specifically, the chinese speaking communities. that will be in january. some of the things we expect our print ads, newspaper ads, with a focus of education, explaining how the cards work, how to get the card. >> thank you for your efforts. i had a couple of thoughts. i know there was a pickup in the branding within the chinese community because the name kept on changing. now i appreciate that there is a name to establish that brand within the community. there is almost no bilingual or trilingual information on your web site. i wonder what you will do to address that. >> we do have some translations available on the website.

>> i could not find it when i visited. >> certainly, some feedback is that it needs to be more prominent. that is the first thing we will do. there are some translations available in chinese and spanish on the website. the other point is we have in place for a number of years a number of language lines where you can call in and we can have it arranged for any language. >> i would strongly suggest making it more accessible to a different languages. and the vending machines themselves provided little information in other languages. if you could talk about what you would do in those areas. >> i would defer that conversation to mta. in the